


Fine Line

by mymelancholy



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Character Development, Denial of Feelings, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Humor, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28381500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mymelancholy/pseuds/mymelancholy
Summary: “I’m sorry, it’s just. Are you telling me that you are now running an anti-bullying club alongside the kid you used to bully in high school?”“I did not bully him!”“Oh, puh-lease, you were obsessed with him. You couldn’t just let him live his life, every little thing he did you had a problem with and you watched him constantly.”(Or: Choi Soobin learns the difference between love and hate very, very, and I mean very slowly.)
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Choi Yeonjun, Choi Soobin/Huening Kai
Comments: 12
Kudos: 88
Collections: TXT Secret Santa Fic Fest 2020





	Fine Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merakicats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merakicats/gifts).



> Alright, so small warning: Bullying will be mentioned in this, but it’s really more about enemies and misunderstandings and Soobin being an absolute fool than anything else as I don’t like relationships involving actual bullying. Still, if even the mention of such topics bothers you, beware.
> 
> (Also, if this seems like just your average American college AU with some random mentions of it actually taking place in Korea, that’s because it basically is and I’m sorry.)

“For most people, it’s easy to imagine bullying taking place on a playground, in a school cafeteria, or in a locker room. The common assumption is that bullying is limited to the scope of grade school. The reality is that bullying is also common in college and even the workplace. However, adult bullying is an often-overlooked issue. As young adults enter college, and as new forms of bullying become more rampant and invasive, it is imperative that we work to-” 

Suddenly, Yeonjun puts the flyer down from where he’d been holding it in front of his face with a loud flap and turns to Soobin.

“Ok well, that seems long, but, you know. Fun.”

Soobin scowls and yanks the flyer out of his unappreciative hand and unzips the front of his backpack, folding it and putting it back in. He gets up from where he’d been kneeling and shrugs his backpack onto one side of his shoulder, turning and heading in the direction of the club.

“Well, I thought it sounded nice. Anyway, I’m not that passionate about anything else, like you are, so I figured I could at least try to do some good while I’m here.”

“Awww.” Soobin is almost knocked off balance when an arm lands around his shoulders and a hand starts roughly pinching his cheek.

“Soobinie is so good~ Using his own valuable university time for the betterment of other’s lives.” He sniffs and wipes away a non-existent tear. “We don’t deserve you.”

“Ok, ok.” Soobin laughs slightly and pushes him off.

“Anyway, no offense, I didn’t really read my own clubs’ flyers either, too boring. I just saw gay and I saw dance, and I said ‘those two.’”

Soobin smiles at his best friend’s flippant nature and says, “Glad you’re putting a lot of thought into it.”

“Ehhh, why should I start now?” He waves his hand, dismissively.

“Well, I guess you’ve gotten this far. Alright, I’m heading over there now.”

“Ahh, ok, my little baby off to go save the world, let me know how it goes after, love you!”

“Ah~ who’s that guy talking to? Must be a weirdo,” Soobin shouts behind him as he walks away, ignoring the distant “hey!” he gets in response.

—

Soobin gets to the club room a good 15 minutes before the time they’re supposed to meet, and as more people start arriving, he concludes that he definitely is not going to know a single person here. Which shouldn’t be too surprising, as well, he basically doesn’t know anyone on this entire campus in general. The main reason he needed to make himself join a club to begin with, despite having little to no hobbies or interests in his life, the way Yeonjun does.

He pulls out his phone to avoid having to awkwardly try to converse with any of them and notes that ok, this is probably why he doesn’t have any friends in the first place.

He opens his texts and starts once again reading through his conversation with Namjoon. At least that’ll be one person he knows. Well, sort of. 

It was more that Namjoon happened to pick the one person on campus who was too polite to cut him off and walk away while he went on and on about his club to him, but, admittedly, Soobin liked what he heard about it. It was the only one he didn’t feel exhausted thinking about having to try to involve himself in anyway, and that was something.

Needless to say, before it was all over, Soobin had somehow ended up agreeing to help run the whole damn club with him. It was Namjoon’s last year and he was involved in a lot of other clubs. He just wanted to leave the club in good hands when he graduated and Soobin seemed really kind, he could tell! He wasn’t just dumping the whole club off on him either, he planned to leave one of their other members in charge but he was young and Namjoon wanted to make sure he had someone there to help him. Namjoon would still be stopping in to help them both as often as he could too. And if he ended up not liking it, he could absolutely leave whenever he wanted, that would be fine too!

“...Ok,” Soobin remembers saying weakly, after silently listening to all that, then feeling his limp hand squeezed and excitedly shaken up and down as Namjoon smiled at him, eyes squeezed closed, two dimples poking into his cheeks that rivaled Soobin’s own.

Anyway, that was in the moment, and Soobin was bad at saying no, so he had since texted him quite a few times as he inwardly panicked about just what he had gotten himself into. But Namjoon swore it was a very easy-going club and he wouldn’t be alone so just to take it easy.

Which is currently what he’s trying to do, as he shakes his leg aggressively up and down underneath the table. At least he’s doing some good, he reminds himself. And at least he’ll make some friends, he assumes. 

High school Soobin definitely would’ve thought the idea of trying to make a friend at all sounded way too exhausting and ran out of the room right now, but realizing you have no courses with your only friend on campus/the planet can really change a person in that way.

And what club are you gonna find nicer people in than an anti-bullying one anyway, right? ...Right.

It’s only one minute til the time when they’re supposed to meet, when Namjoon walks in, thank god. He feels considerably more at ease seeing a familiar face. 

He’s followed in by someone who stands behind him and makes no move to sit down, so Soobin thinks it might be the kid he was talking about leaving in charge. Although, he must be an awfully big kid to still show up behind Namjoon, Soobin thinks.

“Alright, how’s everybody doing?” Namjoon starts off and drops a stack of notebooks and papers onto the table in front of him.

“I see we got a lotta new faces, dope, thank you to all of you for coming.” Soobin wonders briefly if all of them were semi-forced here as well.

“I’m the founder of this club, Kim Namjoon, and some of you here already know it’s my last year, so I’m happy to see the club taking off even as I leave. I know that all of you are gonna continue to do a lot of good, so… fighting.” He holds his fist up and does that same closed-eye, dimple smile he used to get Soobin here.

“Of course, that being said, I wanna let my successor take it from here, so. Huening Kai.”

Wait a minute.

Namjoon holds his hand out to present the person behind him, and out steps the second familiar face Soobin’s seen in the last few minutes, and this one most definitely does NOT make him feel more at ease.

This can’t be happening.

Kai bows and waves, then introduces himself, and yes, there’s no mistaking that this is indeed happening, this is that Huening Kai.

“Actually.” Namjoon speaks up. “I know a few of you have already met Kai, as he helped us out last year, but one of our new members has agreed to help him out this year, so I’d like him to stand up real quick and introduce himself too, yea? Soobin?”

Oh no. Oh no.

Kai blinks and looks around and Soobin looks down at the table, thinks maybe if he’s still enough that they won’t see him.

“Ah,” Namjoon says, and he knows that theory wasn’t true. He looks up and Namjoon is smiling in what he’s assuming is supposed to be a reassuring manner, and waving him to stand up.

He supposes he has no choice.

Soobin gulps, grips his chair hard one last time for strength, and stands up.

And Huening Kai screams.

Typical.

—

It’s only the third week of school, and, as probably anyone with eyes could tell by Soobin’s messed up hair, wrinkled clothes, and tired eyes, some hadn’t adjusted quite yet to being back.

Soobin’s books and loose papers he had been ungracefully attempting to shove into his already messy locker fall to the ground in a huge avalanche that he can only bring himself to sigh and stare tiredly at.

“Hey!” He feels a smack on the back that he flinches and turns to glare annoyedly at.

“Quiz today, did you get any studying done? I know you were up late gaming, so I feel like the answer is probably no.”

Yeonjun turns casually and looks down at the pile of books and papers spread out on the floor.

“Geez, what happened here? I mean, the usual I guess,” he mumbles. “Need any help? You look like shit by the way.”

The blue haired boy kneels down and starts collecting papers before Soobin can answer and he mutters, “thanks,” one part sarcastically, and one part in actual appreciation.

“Did you get any sleep at all?” his friend asks him, as he shuffles the papers together, as if they’ll remain that organized for even a single period after they’re done this.

“Mm… not much,” Soobin mumbles and rubs one of his puffy eyes, then gets to picking up the rest of the books on the floor.

Yeonjun sighs and looks at him in much the same way his parents or teachers do. He supposes it’s a look of disappointment, but for disappointment you would have to have expectations, and he can’t possibly imagine how he managed to give them any of those.

“You gotta get your act together, buddy.”

Soobin groans.

“WELL,” he smacks him on the shoulder again “can’t be late, good luck with that quiz!” and he runs off.

Soobin watches him jog away in his letterman jacket to get to class before the bell rings and for the thousandth time wonders how they are friends. He crumples the last piece of paper into his locker and slams it shut before the contents can make their escape again and leans down to pick up his backpack.

The bell rings and he sighs, standing up and making his way toward homeroom, where a quiz apparently awaits him. But whatever, he’ll just wing it. As he always does.

—

OR-

Soobin gets to class (late, obviously) and, after arguing briefly with his teacher about not having a late note, turns to take one of the last empty seats in class, which he realizes, coincidentally, is in the back row, directly behind Kang Taehyun.

Kang Taehyun, AKA the smartest kid in class. AKA the smartest kid in _school_ , really. And Soobin might not have to disappoint his parents today. Well, at least, not as far as they know.

It’s quiet in the back row, even before the quiz starts, and the only one beside him is the new, foreign kid, who doesn’t seem to speak to much of anyone, and someone who looks to be napping two seats over and he realizes this is going to be a breeze.

Two minutes into the quiz, and Soobin realizes he might’ve spoken too soon.

See, Soobin is blind as hell, but he also was very tired this morning. His eyes were irritated from no sleep and his excessive amount of allergies. And well, putting in contacts is scary enough under normal circumstances. The point is, he isn’t wearing them. And Kang Taehyun writes in size three font. 

Why does he write so small? And so much? Soobin squints and looks closer and he can’t possibly imagine what he could be writing so much of. If Soobin had to take a guess at answering that question himself, it would’ve been one single word. Which just goes to show how much assistance he needs here. He leans in a little closer, and-

A hand slams onto Kang Taehyun’s desk, effectively shielding what view he did have, and a throat is cleared loudly in front of him.

Soobin jumps and slowly looks up to see their teacher. Well. He’s in for it now.

“HUENING KAI.”

Wait, what? Huening Kai, that’s-

Soobin looks over and the new kid is hunched over, head bowed as if in shame and fists clenched together on his desk. Was he..?

“Huening Kai, I expected better of you.” She grabs the quiz angrily off his desk. “I’m not sure what they teach you in America but this is not the way to start out at a new school.”

The boy nods slightly and keeps his eyes down on his desk. Soobin wonders if he’s going to cry. He feels sorry for him, but if somebody had to take the bullet-

“Choi Soobin, however, I expect this from entirely.” And she sweeps the paper off his desk.

Dammit. He slides down into his seat.

“You’ll both see me after class.” And she walks away.

—

After a fun 40 minutes of sitting and staring off into the distance while others finished their tests (Taehyun was first, and he glared at them both with the fire of a thousand suns as he sat back down), the rest of the class cleared out and Soobin stood up, rather reluctantly, and walked to his teacher’s desk at the front of the class.

It was the same old nonsense he was used to hearing and it was rather short, thankfully; probably in part to her having mostly given up on him by now.

He walks into the hall and stands by Yeonjun’s locker which happens to be across from his homeroom, waiting to update him on exactly how well the quiz-taking went. He’s sure he’s expecting badly, but maybe not _quite_ so badly.

Soobin leans back on the lockers and watches as his presumed detention buddy makes his way up to the teacher’s desk after him. He looks so meek and well mannered, nodding as the teacher talks, with his head still down. The talk seems to be lasting quite a bit longer than his, but no surprise there. He’s guessing she hasn’t given up on this one yet. 

And Soobin understands why. He doesn’t know much about Huening Kai, isn’t sure if he’s ever really even spoken to him actually, but he just seems… well. Like the kind of boy that would never be caught cheating in his life. Or doing anything bad at all, for that matter. It’s not like Soobin would call himself a bad boy. More like a neutral boy. But this, this for sure, is a good boy.

He’s still nodding his head, but Soobin notes that it’s now with more energy. He’s meeting the teacher’s eyes, head still turned down, suffice it to say, as he’s much taller, but he would almost say he looks… cheerful? Hopeful?

“Why’s it look like it’s going so much better for him…” he mumbles, before Yeonjun crashes into him, noticing he’s zoned out and seeing an opportunity to scare him. 

Soobin yelps and pushes him away and Yeonjun laughs before asking, “So, how’d that quiz go? Did you pull off some kinda miracle?”

Soobin sighs.

Yeonjun turns to start opening his locker.

“That bad, huh?”

“I have detention after school.”

“Again?!”

—

Soobin sits outside on the bleachers, kicking a few leaves around and waiting for the others to get there. He’s “always late,” they say, but if that’s true, why is he always the first one to turn up to detention, huh?

Well, he thinks. Probably because he has no social life. The only person he talks to is Yeonjun.

Yeonjun plays basketball and Soobin’s last detention had been in the gymnasium, so not only did he get to lay on the bleachers in the cool air conditioning, he had company since nobody in this school was going to tell one of the athletes they couldn’t practice whenever they wanted, god forbid. This school and their exhaustive love of sports.

He guesses sitting in the cool air conditioning, napping and talking to his friend wasn’t a sufficient punishment for cheating the way it was being late though. No, this time he has to brave the actual outdoors. He squints at the sun and groans.

Just then, he hears some shuffling, and no more than a second later, Huening Kai is dropping onto the bleachers a few feet away from him, his head down again and hands in his lap. Soobin watches him as he struggles to stop himself from fiddling nervously. Soobin isn’t the type to make idle conversation with people. But… he’s curious.

“First time?”

Huening Kai looks over quickly, as if he didn’t know he was there, or maybe just didn’t expect Soobin to acknowledge that he was.

“Ah, um, yes. ...It’s only the third week of school, after all.”

“...Right.” Soobin figures he won’t mention that in those three weeks, he’s already had detention once. Well, twice.

“But I mean, ever?”

Huening Kai sighs, and it’s about the most dejected sounding thing he’s ever heard.

“Yes.”

Before he can say any more (although he isn’t really sure if he planned to), their teacher stomps her way up to them and gives some speech about how they’ll be scraping gum off the bleachers and sweeping them for whatever time is left. And that if they keep on with the sort of behavior they exhibited in class today, this is exactly where they’ll end up in life: Cleaning the bleachers for the athletes they could have become if only they had played fair.

Soobin manages to hold in a verbal reaction to this ridiculousness but he’s not sure he manages quite so successfully with his face.

Right, he better stop cheating so he can magically become an athlete. He’d rather be a janitor any day, he thinks.

The boy beside him, however, just nods wholeheartedly and… thanks her? Weirdo.

Once she’s gone, he’s left under the bleachers with that weirdo, both wearing gloves, holding a putty knife, and staring listlessly at a wall of gum before them.

Huening Kai whines and sits down on the ground, muttering that he’ll get the ones down there, but then looks over when Soobin sits down a few feet away from him.

“You think I’m going to let you get all the ones down here and leave me standing up there, banging my head for two hours?”

Huening Kai laughs a little and says “I would be banging mine too. I’m tall.”

“Mm, but not as tall as me.”

“I guess not… But I’m sure we’ll both be banging our heads.”

“Well then we’ll start down here so we can both bang our heads at the same time.”

“Ah, I’m sure it’ll be much better to have company…”

Soobin has to press his lips together to stop his mouth from smiling.

The boy beside him sighs and turns back to the bleachers to start scraping and they both silently work for the next couple minutes. Soobin plans to silently work for the next couple hours, honestly. And yet, for whatever reason, he says, “I’m surprised you speak Korean so well.”

“Huh?” He turns again to face Soobin while Soobin keeps working.

“You’re from America, right? And I haven’t heard you say much. So I thought you didn’t speak much Korean.”

“Oh,” he turns back and keeps working. “I actually haven’t lived in America since I was little. Everyone just… assumes that’s where I came from when I say I moved. Because, you know, I look like I am.”

“Well, kind of.” Soobin finally turns to face him and keeps a neutral expression as he scans his features. He certainly doesn’t look like your typical American, or what Soobin’s mind imagines when he thinks of one, anyway. After all, he’s awfully... soft looking? Pretty? Something like that.

“Where are you from then?”

“China. Well, I’ve lived there for a few years anyway. I guess we’ve moved around a lot... But my mother is Korean so I’ve always known how to speak it even if I was speaking English or Mandarin.”

“Wow…” Soobin says lazily and turns to start working again. “I can barely speak the one language.”

Huening Kai laughs and tells him “You seem like you’re doing fine to me.”

“Barely… I think I’m already failing Korean.”

“Ah, well yea… it’s hard.”

Soobin sees from the corner of his eye that the boy is leaning back on his hands, staring at him now.

“I’m Kai, by the way.”

Soobin can’t stop himself from laughing this time and says, “I know.”

“Well, you said you hadn’t heard me say much, so I figured perhaps you hadn’t heard me say that.”

Soobin laughs again and says, “I’m Soobin.”

“I know,” Kai repeats back to him, grinning.

“Even though I also haven’t heard you say much. Til now.”

He’s right, Soobin thinks. Why is he talking so much, all of a sudden? For some reason it’s embarrassing, and yet, it continues on that way and before he knows it, their two hours is up and their teacher is marching out to dismiss them, keys already in her hand. And without even checking to see if they got any gum off at all, she walks off toward the parking lot.

Soobin sighs and drops the putty knife.

“We could’ve not even done any work at all…”

“Right..? I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry though.” He leans down and grabs the knives and bucket full of gum and stands back up. “I don’t wanna get in any more trouble.”

“I guess…”

They slowly start making their way back to the school.

“Plus, it’s only for a day anyway.”

“Well, we don’t know what she’ll make us do tomorrow,” he says, feeling exhausted already. “Or the rest of the week.”

“The rest of the week? She can’t make us do anything in class.”

“No, in detention.”

“Detention is only today though.”

Soobin freezes and turns to him.

“No… it’s all week. She told me so after class.”

Kai suddenly looks pale and turns to face him, speaking more hesitantly with what he says next.

“Ah… she told me mine was just today. That’s what she said to me after class.”

“What?! Wait, why?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I just talked to her.”

“What did you say?”

“N-nothing, I just… um, I told her I was sorry and would never do it again and really didn’t want my mother to be upset or for anything to go on my permanent record.”

Soobin rolls his eyes.

“Guess I didn’t suck up enough.”

“Suck up?! I didn’t want to be suspended or expelled! It’s not my fault you didn’t even try to talk to her at all!”

Soobin scoffs.

“Well it’s not my fault we got caught cheating even, is it? You were the one she addressed first!”

Kai laughs loud and humorlessly, as if he’d just heard something preposterous.

“Are you kidding me?! She never would’ve caught me at all if you weren’t leaning over and staring an inch from his paper, like… like some kind of amateur!”

“Oh, what, should I be like some sort of… some sort of cheating expert or something?! Is that why you’ve never had detention before?!”

The shorter boy just presses his lips together and glares at him.

Soobin glares back.

Finally, after an appropriately long and intense glaring session, Kai “hmph”s and stomps off, Soobin trying his best to “hmph” louder, and stomping off in the opposite direction.

Screw that guy. Whatever it was that Soobin had thought about him to make him talk to him for two hours straight, he had thought wrong.

He’s just a teacher’s pet. Just a suck up. He’s just like every other stupid person in this goddamn school.

And from that day on, they’d been enemies.

—

Yeonjun bursts out laughing. And when he says bursts, Soobin really means bursts. He can feel the air being expelled onto his face. He’s surprised he wasn’t spat on.

“Oh my god!”

Soobin wrongly thinks him managing to get some words out means he’s done, but nope, he only takes a deep breath and starts back up again, leaning over and slapping his thigh, then coming back up to point at him and laugh more.

“Are you done?” Soobin asks, flatly, staring him down with a completely unamused expression.

“Ahhh…” Yeonjun winds down, sitting beside him and catching his breath, still letting a few chuckles out once in a while.

“I’m sorry, it’s just. Are you telling me that you are now running an anti-bullying club _alongside_ the kid you used to bully in highschool?”

“I did not bully him!”

“Oh, puh-lease, you were obsessed with him. You couldn’t just let him live his life, every little thing he did you had a problem with and you watched him constantly.”

Soobin sputters. 

“I was not obsessed with him, what the hell?! And I didn’t watch him, I just saw him everywhere I went! Being annoying… Manipulating people to get his way.”

Yeonjun mumbles “For the thousandth time, are we talking about the same kid?”

“Yes! Ugh, that’s the problem, he has everyone fooled.”

“Wow, look at you, you’re right back at it.”

“I am not.”

“Ok. Honestly, I woulda thought you missed him, you seemed so dejected when he left.”

“Yea, ok, good one.”

“I’m serious. But, well, I guess you’re right back to bullying him again.” Yeonjun sighs. “Gonna make for a real interesting anti-bullying club. Wait, do I wanna join after all? Do you still have that flyer?”

“Shut up. Anyway, if that’s bullying, what do you call what you do to that round kid?”

“Round kid?”

“Yea, with the round little head who always calls you an idiot.”

“OHH, BG!! My little Beomgyu…” Yeonjun purses his lips and chuckles nasally and quite frankly, grossly, under his breath. “So round.”

“Ugh.”

“Ok, well. _That’s_ flirting. I don’t think that’s the same as whatever the hell you were- or. _Are_ doing. Unless?” Yeonjun turns to look at him, eyes wide as if he’d just made some sort of fascinating discovery. “Unless it is?”

“ **It’s NOT**.”

“Hmm…” He stares at him thoughtfully for a moment.

“Ok, well, I hope not, because you would be doing an absolutely awful job of it. And I know you’ve got no game, but god, I hope you’re not that bad.”

Soobin swallows hard, frowns, and looks away.

“ANYWAY, speaking of my Beomgyu!! I saw him in the LGBT+ center, and oooh, you know what that means! He gay. See, I told you he liked me. All that ‘idiot’ talk? Flirting. He’s so cute, he’s practically as bad at flirting as you….. Except, you know, cute.”

Soobin drowns out what Yeonjun is currently saying and starts instead going over what he previously said. Obsessed. He wasn’t obsessed. He was just… so annoying. Way too annoying for Soobin to possibly ignore.

—

“Ugh, look at him over there.”

Yeonjun turns in the direction Soobin’s glare is aimed, mouth full of bread his best friend had kindly and unknowingly shared while he was distracted. 

He scans the area for some sort of scene he could be missing across the cafeteria and ultimately turns back to Soobin, asking, “Who over where?” or, well, as closely to that as he can manage, past all the bread.

“ _Him_ ,” Soobin spits, glaring harder, as if narrowing his own vision will help Yeonjun hone in on the him in question too.

“That brat… That suck up.” 

Yeonjun lets his arms fall dramatically to the side, rolling his eyes in disbelief and swallowing his bread as fast as he can, needing to let an exhausted sigh out in its place. He should’ve known, honestly.

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.”

“You’re really back on this again, huh.”

“Back on?! It just happened yesterday! I mean, it’s currently happening right now, I still have detention for the whole goddamn week.”

“Wow, was it yesterday… But I’ve already heard about it so many times,” Yeonjun mutters thoughtfully, looking up at the ceiling. Soobin just glares.

“And come on, man, can you really blame the detention on him? That’s your asshole homeroom teacher that’s hated you since the moment you met.”

“Hated me because I don’t know how to suck up enough, like Mr. Pro Cheater over there.”

“Right…” Yeonjun glances over at Huening Kai, who is sitting alone and nibbling on a sandwich like a little chipmunk. He turns back to Soobin, whose glare is once again settled on the boy himself.

“Is a week’s detention really so bad, anyway?”

“YES, I was scraping gum off bleachers for two hours! I hardly even had any time to game once I got home. Did you see my ranking? It’s already down after only one day.”

“You don’t think maybe that’s cause you were ranting to me about this kid through your headset the entire time we were playing, or-?”

“No. Why aren’t you taking this seriously, anyway?”

“Seriously? Soobin, you don’t like anyone at this school.”

“This is different! This one isn’t just annoying, this guy is an actual menace. Seriously, I’m seeing so much now. Wait, look at him, look now!!!”

Yeonjun frowns and turns to look at said menace, who is… menacingly drinking from a little juice box.

“Ughhh.”

The blue haired boy turns back to his friend, his friend who’s clearly finally lost it.

“He’s drinking grape juice.”

“Yea, but look how!”

“Yea, through a straw.”

“No!! Like…” Soobin pushes his hair back off his forehead, in clear distress. 

“Like all _cute_ , like nobody eats or drinks so cutely just on accident; He _knows_ , Yeonjun, he knows that’s the way to get what he wants.”

“...Uh-huh. And what’s he want?”

Soobin’s hair is sticking straight up off his forehead and into the air at this point, he’s run his hands through it so much, making him look truly as crazy as he sounds. Yeonjun notes that normally his best friend is shy about showing his forehead, so he must really be in a state not to care.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“...Right.”

Soobin props his chin thoughtfully on his thumb, hand covering the bottom half of his face, with his brow furrowed as if he’s studying him.

“Well!” Yeonjun hops up from the table, hands smacked down on either side. “Let me know if you figure out his evil plan.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m taking this.” Yeonjun picks up the remainder of the bread and waves it in the air.

Soobin startles, looking down to see that there isn’t any left but the single piece Yeonjun is holding.

“What the hell, I was eating that!”

“You were not, you were busy. Anyway, this is why I sit with you, those basketball assholes sure aren’t gonna provide me with any carbs to steal. And it’s the least you could do, making me deal with,” he gestures his breadless hand in Soobin’s general direction, “whatever all this is.”

Soobin frowns and crosses his arms, looking vaguely like a little kid pouting, and Yeonjun pats his shoulder.

“You got detention again after, right? Two hours?”

Soobin slumps down in his seat and mumbles, “Yes…”

“Ok, well come on, look on the bright side.” Yeonjun knocks his shoulder. “At least you won’t have that guy there to bother you anymore, right?”

Soobin bites his lip and stares down at the table, eventually giving a nod and a barely audible “mm-hm.”

Odd.

Yeonjun watches as he suddenly moves past his insane ranting and starts silently eating his long-melted ice cream instead.

Sometimes his friend was so odd.

—

“Alright, so you guys got everything you need, right? We went over the flyers, the benefit… Kai, I gave you the folders, Soobin, imma get you some copies as soon as I can, but til then, you guys don’t mind sharing, right?”

Soobin and Kai stand in front of Namjoon, or at least however much “in front of” it can be considered when they’re standing five feet away from each other, and their eyes shift off to the side.

“Yeaaa, you don’t mind sharing, you guys are buddies!” He grips them each by their shoulders and pulls them in, shaking them back and forth with a big grin.

This may be the most oblivious man Soobin has ever met.

“Man, how lucky is that, right? Soobin,” he looks at him. “I think I was meant to find you that day. It’s the circle of life, like,” Namjoon starts moving his hands in a circle as if he’s about to make a rasengan. “In my death, I give life to something new. And that’s this partnership,” he gestures between them.

What.

“You guys are going to do great things.”

Soobin and Kai blink a few times, the shorter of the two eventually nodding along slowly.

“Of course, I’m not actually going to die, so you can still call me if you need help.” He zips up his bag and throws it over his shoulder, quickly patting them both again, telling them to have a good brainstorming session, and leaving.

Soobin immediately collapses back into his seat at the round table in their courtyard they’d met Namjoon at, slowly followed by Kai, who first has to drag his heavy iron chair out in the loudest, most annoying way possible. Soobin’s head pulses in his hands. As if he hadn’t already had a pounding stress headache since the moment he saw Huening Kai again in that clubroom.

He hadn’t changed one bit. Sure, he might be taller. His face might be more angular. His hair might be longer and more fashionable. (A perm, he thinks. Who gets a perm?) He might be dressed nicer. (A turtleneck and a leather jacket. Who wears leather jackets anyway, unless they’re like… Yeonjun.) But, that was all just part of it, wasn’t it? Part of that whole… facade, to get what he wants. No, this is just the same, annoying boy he had to put up with in high school. And now he’s unlucky enough to meet up with him again here.

Soobin clenches his fists and his leg starts shaking.

“You’re shaking the table.”

He looks up.

Kai is writing something in a notebook, long bangs waving back and forth in his face as he moves his pen so vigorously across the page that Soobin thinks, if it were a pencil, it would’ve snapped off by now. He’s not even meeting his eyes. In fact, Soobin isn’t sure he has since that goddamn ear-piercing shriek back in the clubroom. It pisses him off.

He tries to respond with a grunt but it comes out a lot more like a growl, which would embarrass him if he weren’t so distracted with other emotions right now.

“What the hell are you writing?”

He keeps going, not even a pause to think about his answer.

“Everything Namjoon told us. Ideas for the benefit. Ideas for projects.”

“You’re really just… going on with this.”

“Of course I’m going on with this. I’ve been here since last year. If you don’t want to, you can leave.”

Soobin “tsk”s in annoyance, and mutters, “Fucking typical,” before realizing-

“Wait a minute, what do you mean you’ve been here since last year? You were a high school student. Don’t try to lie to me, we were in the same school.”

“Like I could forget that.”

Soobin grits his teeth. Kai sighs and stops writing, finally looking him in the eyes, making Soobin wonder if this was really what he wanted after all. 

“I started dual enrollment last year. That’s why I started online classes instead, I wanted to get a head start.”

Soobin scoffs.

“So that’s why you suddenly stopped showing up in the middle of the semester. You never even told anyone.”

Kai fixes him with an odd look and says, “I told some people.”

He grits his teeth again.

“Well, whatever. I guess you really cheated your way up; Good job.”

Kai stands up suddenly, pushing his chair back with none of the care he did when pulling it in, causing it to scrape even more deafeningly against the cobblestone. He starts loading his notebook and the many files Namjoon left into his backpack.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Meeting my friend.”

“We have all this… stuff to do!”

Kai puts his palm flat onto the table and leans down, meeting his eyes again, making Soobin decide once and for all that no, this absolutely was not what he wanted. Up this close, he can see just how warm the brown of his eyes is. It’s an unnerving contrast to how coldly he’s staring at him.

“Were you going to do any of that?”

Soobin sputters and then, embarrassingly, nothing else comes out. So they just… stare. For what Soobin will later claim to Yeonjun is at least a full minute, but, in reality, is probably about five seconds. 

Or at least, until they’re interrupted.

“Huening.”

Their eye contact breaks when Kai blinks and turns to his left.

“Ahh, sorry, I was about to meet you.”

“It’s ok, I was only at the entrance for a minute before I saw you. What are you doing?”

Something about this guy looks familiar. But, Soobin reminds himself, he doesn’t know anyone here. Well. More people than he thought, he guesses. Unfortunately. But, what are the odds of that happening agai-

“YOU?! What the hell are you doing here?”

Soobin gapes, taken aback. He’d spent the last hour with his arch nemesis and even _he_ hadn’t been _that_ rude. Who the hell talks to a person like that? 

“Did you have to follow me to university so you’d have someone to copy off of here too, you cheater?”

Soobin’s eyes widen as he finally fully takes in the face before him. Yes, he knew that stupid, perfect face. Same as his stupid, perfect grades. His hair color may have changed but the rest is unmistakable.

His head pulses again and he has to lower his head and massage his temples.

“Kang Taehyun.”

That’s who would talk to a person like that. 

Smart people think they can talk to people however they want. And so do good looking people, so this guy’s basically the worst, present company excluded.

“Cheater.”

Soobin finds himself letting out something else that’s embarrassingly close to a growl and his head flies up, one hand gripping the table and the other pointing at Kai behind him.

“He cheated too! And yet you’re practically best friends, I guess, so why am I still ‘Cheater?’”

Taehyun scoffs and turns away, adjusting the messenger bag on his shoulder.

“That’s completely different. Don’t even compare the two.”

Soobin is completely lost at this point, face contorted to show it.

“Different how? And compare what, we cheated on the same test!”

“I meant don’t compare him to you. You’re an asshole.”

Soobin’s mouth falls open and Taehyun grabs onto the shoulder of Kai’s jacket, who looks even a little astounded himself, and pulls on it, saying, “Let’s go.”

He turns and walks away, Kai trailing behind him, only looking over his shoulder for a second right before he disappears from sight.

—

“An asshole!” Soobin repeats for the third time, scoffing.

Yeonjun sighs behind him.

“I mean.” He scoffs again. “He’s the one who’s friends with the actual asshole! I mean, god, after three whole years, really? They’re that close?”

The pink haired boy squints, confused, once again, at the direction this seems to be going.

“Like, he hasn’t even seen him in one and a half years. Or- Wait, do you think they kept in contact?” Soobin pauses and looks down, before eventually muttering “He said he told some people he left… Was it really that guy?” He’s silent, and Yeonjun gives him a moment with whatever nonsensical thoughts he’s having, judging him all the way.

“So, he really chooses to be so close with that guy and yet, I’m the asshole?!” There he goes, back on track. “I mean, can you believe that?”

“Oh, yea.”

Soobin’s head flips around, looking at him in total disbelief, for the first time since they met up and he started pacing back and forth, off on another one of his crazy rants.

“What do you mean?”

“Dude.” Yeonjun sighs and hops effortlessly down from the brick wall he’d been sitting on, to place a hand on Soobin’s shoulder. “If they’re really as close as you say. Then yea, it’s _probably_ less about the cheating than it is about you being a huge asshole to his best friend throughout high school. Oh!” Yeonjun perks up, as if he suddenly remembered something. “And now, in college. What was it that pamphlet thingy said? More rampant and invasive than ever? Sounds ambitious. How you gonna pull that off?”

Soobin looks genuinely shocked and hurt, and Yeonjun deflates, immediately feeling guilty.

“Why would you say that? I did not bully him, you know what my problem was with him.”

Yeonjun sighs and puts his hand back on Soobin’s shoulder, who stiffens up this time but doesn’t shake him off.

“Soobin… I know what you think your problem was with him. But come on. There was nothing wrong with that kid. Sure, he was cute and sometimes people are easier on you when you’re cute, but like, look at me. Fucking adorable. And yet, you love me.”

“Ok, this isn’t…”

“What I’m saying is, whatever your thing is with him, maybe it’s time to get over it. We’re ‘adults’ now.”

“Why did you use air quotes?”

“Soobin, stay focused. I’m saying, of course Taehyun thinks you’re an asshole. You acted like an asshole, but you were just a kid. Now, you’re both in college, you’re ‘more mature,’ and you don’t wanna be all... rampant and invasive-like at him.” 

He pauses there, raising his eyebrow. “Unless you do?”

“What?”

He shakes his head.

“No, anyway, what I’m saying is, everyone here is going to think you’re an asshole if you keep that up, not just Kang Taehyun. And you’re literally in a club with a bunch of people who fuck up bullies as an extra curricular.”

“What do you think this club does?”

“Do you hear what I’m saying though?”

Soobin presses his lips together, looking actually pained at the idea of having to be nice to this kid.

He collapses onto the lower level of the brick wall and sits with his head in his hands for a minute, leg shaking.

Yeonjun looks around, then takes a step closer and hits him gently in the arm.

“You ok?”

Soobin sighs and looks up.

“He just bothers me so much.”

“Cause he cheated?”

“No, just cause… You know, like the way he charms everyone into doing whatever he wants. You know I hate people like that.”

Yeonjun scoffs and gestures at himself.

“Am I a joke to you?”

Soobin laughs weakly, for the first time since getting there, and says, “You don’t do that.”

“I do too, I’m the most charming person either of us know. For instance, I just charmed Beomgyu into going to this party with me.”

Soobin looks up, somewhat astounded.

“You did?”

“Well, I confirmed that he would be there, and he confirmed that I would be there, so basically. Well, technically he said ‘Ugh, you’re going?’ but we all know what that means, coming from him.”

“Ah,” he puts his head back into his hands, thinking that makes a lot more sense.

“Anyway, come with me, that’ll cheer you up.”

Soobin’s head shoots up this time and he stares at Yeonjun as if he’s lost it.

“You think going to **a party** will cheer me up.”

“Hey, you’re the one who said you were going to try to be all sociable this year!”

“Ugh. Forget all that. I’ve had enough.”

“Wow, that didn’t last long, predictably.”

“Listen, I tried, ok? God, you let one guy talk your ear off for an hour about his goddamn club and look where it gets you.”

Yeonjun slaps onto his shoulder and shakes it.

“You’re just feeling discouraged because the only people you’ve socialized with so far are people you don’t like. We gotta get you around some likable people quick before you spend another four years locked in your room, playing League of Legends.” Yeonjun’s eyes brighten, like he’s had some sort of epiphany.

“Oh! Ok, like, for instance, Jimin’s boyfriend is a pro-gamer college drop-out. That sounds more up your alley, right?”

Soobin grunts in response but inwardly acknowledges that he is not wrong.

“So you just don’t wanna show up to this party alone and look like a loser, right?”

“Please.”

—

“Ok, you’re gonna need to stop giving me the silent treatment before we get there, showing up to a party with somebody who hates you looks even sadder than just showing up alone.”

“I’m not giving you the silent treatment.”

Yeonjun looks over at Soobin as he walks a couple feet over from him down the sidewalk, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

“Then why do you sound so silent and look so pouty?”

Soobin sighs and uncrosses his arms, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets instead.

“I’m just. Ugh. I can’t believe I’m going to a party, I don’t even know these people.”

“I mean, even I’ve only known them for a week. But relax, they’re cool!”

Soobin’s eyes shoot over to him and Yeonjun corrects himself, “Relax, they’re _nice_. Trust me, Soobin, nobody is more welcoming than a bunch of gay people.”

Soobin sighs. 

“So what, they’re all from your club? How do you know the drop-out then?”

“Well, the guys throwing the party are mostly from my club. The drop-out started dating Jimin, the president, before he dropped out, and now they all got this house together.”

Yeonjun turns into the driveway of a (much larger than Soobin was expecting) house, and Soobin follows after him, walking up to the doorstep.

“Wait, so is this like a housewarming party?”

“That’s exactly what this is.” Yeonjun knocks on the door.

“Then… weren’t we supposed to bring like a gift or something?”

“Noo, I mean. No… Right? I mean, we’re not forty.”

And while Soobin is still staring at him in panic, the door opens.

“SOOBIN?!”

He jumps and turns his head to see who’s shouting at him but is immediately pulled into a hug that blocks his vision, his back being pat aggressively three times. When he’s finally released, he sees it’s…

“Namjoon? What… are you doing here.”

He laughs a single, startling loud laugh, that’s honestly verging more on a shout, and says, “At my house? Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

He turns to look questioningly at Yeonjun, who is just staring back and forth between them both, completely lost.

“Nah, man, I’m just kidding.” He grabs his shoulder and shakes him back and forth. “We’re happy to have you. I’m guessing you’re friends with Yeonjunie?”

“Uhh. Yea.”

“Sweet, well come in, guys, come in. Make yourselves at home, there’s like, drinks and stuff in the kitchen.”

He ushers them through the door, closing it behind them and running off as someone calls his name.

“You know Namjoon? When did that happen? I gotta be honest, buddy, all this antisocial talk??? Starting to think it might be an act.”

Soobin sighs.

“Don’t, that’s the guy I told you about. The one that forced me into the anti-bullying club.”

“Oh, now it’s forced, is it?” Yeonjun mumbles, walking toward the kitchen, Soobin startling at the thought of being left alone at this strange party, and running after him.

“Namjoon’s in your bully club though? He’d never mentioned he was in a bully club.”

Before Soobin can get a chance to tell him not to call it that, someone interjects, “Namjoon’s in pretty much every club.”

Soobin, standing awkwardly in the doorway of the kitchen, watches as a small, admittedly adorable, pink haired man runs up and hugs Yeonjun tightly, having to stand on his tippy toes to get his arms around his shoulders.

Yeonjun hugs him back and bows slightly after, Pink Hair hitting him at his attempt to be formal, making Yeonjun grab his own arm and stare at him offendedly, then move away so he can’t hurt him anymore.

Pink Hair turns to Soobin and Soobin starts to bow, before thinking better of it.

“Is this your friend you said you were bringing?” Yeonjun “hm”s, sounding distracted already, while the guy shakes his hand.

“Oh my god, why are all of you so tall? I thought Yeonjun was tall when he joined GSA, but damn, you’re like a tree.”

“Uhh,” Soobin isn’t sure what to say to that, to be honest.

“You’re trying to get Jungkook to come in here and punch this guy. Don’t involve him in your weird-ass foreplay.”

Soobin’s caught completely off guard by that one, and he looks around, panickedly, searching for the voice who said it. Soon enough, he sees that round head boy Yeonjun won’t shut up about standing in front of him.

He shakes his hand with about the weakest grip Soobin has ever felt before, and that’s coming from a guy who hates sports or working out in the slightest.

“I guess you’re Soobin.”

Jimin hits Round Head now too, who yells, “OW!” and holds his arm, as if he’s been seriously injured.

“Don’t tell him that! He just got here and you’re going to scare him off.”

“I’m just trying to protect him,” he mumbles.

Soobin is… concerned.

“Don’t listen to him, he just tries to cause trouble. I’m Jimin, this is Beomgyu.”

“I know that one,” Soobin says with the tiredness of someone who has had to hear that name a hundred times a day since orientation, and seen every picture on his Instagram.

“Oh, have you two met already?”

“Not exactly…”

“Oh, then how…”

Soobin’s eyes shift over in Yeonjun’s direction and Jimin’s follow.

“Beomgyu. Beomgyu. Hey, stop ignoring me.”

“Ignoring you? I was saying hi to your friend.”

“You don’t even _know_ him,” Yeonjun whines.

Beomgyu rolls his eyes, turning away and sipping at his drink as he walks back to his spot sitting at the counter.

Jimin looks back to Soobin, telling him, “Ah, right, got it.”

Soobin shakes his head in disapproval, but is smiling slightly anyway, then remembers he hasn’t actually introduced himself all this time. God, this is why he doesn’t meet new people.

“Ah… sorry, I’m Soobin.”

“Yea, I know,” Beomgyu says from his stool in front of the drinks, and Jimin perks up.

“Ah, you’re the friend he said would wanna meet Jungkookie!”

“The guy he just said would punch me?”

Beomgyu laughs, having to hold his hand over his mouth so he won’t spit his drink everywhere. Jimin glares at him.

“NO, he won’t punch you. And you already know Namjoon?”

“Yea, he kinda… gave his anti-bullying club to me.”

Jimin rolls his eyes.

“I told him he was taking on too much. Then, when he said he had it under control and told me about that whole thing I told him he was crazy. No offense, I’m sure you’ll do great.”

Soobin wants to assure him that he most definitely will not. It was a long-shot to begin with, to be fair, but under these circumstances, that’s pretty much entirely out the window.

Yeonjun spins around from his place on the stool beside Beomgyu and leans back against the counter.

“Why didn’t Namjoon ever mention he was in the bullying club?”

“ _Anti_ -bullying club.” Beomgyu flicks him.

“OW!!! There’s a bully right here, go get Namjoon!”

“Yea, go get Namjoon, tell him this idiot is disrespecting his club.”

Yeonjun angrily mumbles, “you-” and puts him in a headlock before he can get out the rest.

“Which club?”

Soobin steps out of the way as another stunningly handsome, well dressed, person enters the kitchen. He wonders briefly if everyone at this party is sickeningly good looking, and if so, why didn’t Yeonjun warn him so he could have attempted to look at least moderately decent himself? Or maybe just, you know, not come.

“Soobin, this is Taehyung. Tae Tae, Soobin.”

Taehyung pulls his one hand out of his pocket and waves at him, holding a beer in the other. Soobin holds his hand up in an awkward wave back.

“His anti-bullying club he started like three years ago. He gave it to Soobin now,” Jimin tells him.

“Ohh, the one we couldn’t figure out his hat for…” He takes a sip of his beer, like that’s all the explanation they’re getting on the matter, and Soobin says, “what?”

Jimin deflates and starts explaining, looking as if he knows as well as anyone that what he’s saying sounds stupid.

“So, we have a theory. Well, Tae does. He asked Namjoon’s advisor once just how many clubs he’s a part of and all he said was-”

“Namjoon is a man who wears many hats,” Taehyung says, nodding sagely, in what sounds like it’s meant to be some sort of wise, old man voice.

“Yes, and some of us are very literal and also don’t know terms used by elderly men, so it’s now an acceptable theory in our group that Namjoon is actually in every club on campus and just shows up to each one wearing a different hat.”

Yeonjun leans his arm onto the table, sliding into Beomgyu’s space and pushing a few drinks aside in the same movement.

“Beomgyu, you’re in the fine arts club, right, has Namjoon ever shown up wearing, like, a baret?”

“So am I,” Taehyung mumbles, pouting, and Soobin gets the feeling that being that good looking makes you unused to not being the one receiving attention at any given moment.

Beomgyu puts his hand on Yeonjun’s shoulder to hold him where he’s at and leans away from him, glaring.

“No… But he’s in the photography club and the nature club.”

“Not to give any more weight to this theory, but I saw him walk out of the journaling club the other day and he was wearing a hat.” 

Soobin isn’t sure which one of them said that but every person in the room looks off into the distance like they’re pondering some sort of great, unexplained mystery, and even Jimin says, “What the hell.”

Namjoon really is a strange guy, though. He’d suspected it from the moment he gave a complete stranger his entire club, but he’s deciding it now, once and for all.

The same voice who’d given them the “journaling in a hat” tip speaks up again, sighing.

“You people are ridiculous.”

Wait a goddamn minute. Soobin… knows that condescending voice.

No sooner than he realizes that, he sees the back of that same, now blonde, head that he watched pull Kai away from him earlier, walking toward Jimin.

God, just how small is this campus? He misses the time when he thought his problem would be how big it was, that’s for sure. He missed the time when he thought he wouldn’t know anybody.

“I got it,” Blonde Taehyun tells him, prompting Jimin to jump up and down a few times before hugging him, all the while thanking him profusely.

“Did he see?” Jimin suddenly seems to decide he needs to switch to whispering and Taehyun whispers back something about someone taking it upstairs.

“Ok, good, good. Thank you so much, I couldn’t get away to pick it up without looking suspicious. Oh, anyway, this is Yeonjun, from GSA, and that over there is his friend, Soobin.”

Taehyun skips over Yeonjun and instead quickly turns around to look at Soobin, huffing and rolling his eyes, looking away from him in disbelief. Soobin wants to say to trust him, that he can’t believe it himself.

Taehyun looks back and licks his lips in annoyance, asking him, “Is there anywhere where you aren’t?”

“Yea, that’s similar to what I was thinking,” Soobin sighs and walks over to get a drink. He isn’t a big drinker but, well, under the right circumstances.

He hears Taehyun huff again behind him and tries to drown it out and concentrate on pouring his drink, Beomgyu sliding him over a cup.

Calm down, calm down. He’s annoying, but it could be worse. At least Kai isn’t with him.

“Don’t tell me you’re stalking Kai still, after all these years.”

Soobin squeezes his cup, almost breaking it, before realizing, wait.

“Ahh, that was heavy! Why did you make me carry that up there all by myself?! Don’t say it’s because I’m bigger than you, you go to the gym every day! Why’s everybody so quiet?”

Soobin turns reluctantly, meeting eyes with Kai, who eventually turned his gaze in the direction everyone was staring, after receiving no answer.

And again, he screams.

Soobin crushes his cup for real this time.

Typical… So typical.

Kai puts his hand over his mouth and looks around, scanning over everyone in the room who’s staring at him now, embarrassed. He puts his hands down, eventually, and gives a fake laugh.

“Here we go again,” Yeonjun says, exhausted, and takes a big swig of his drink.

“Do you guys know each other?”

“We… run the anti-bullying club,” Kai mumbles, weakly. 

“Ahh, right, Kai, I totally forgot you were the one Namjoon was thinking of giving it to. The one part of that plan I thought sounded solid, to be honest. Again, no offense, Soobin.”

Soobin, who is now leaning over the counter, head down, with both hands placed firmly on each side of him, says nothing.

Is this really going to be his college experience? He didn’t particularly want one to begin with and he can thank his parents for forcing him to, but he’d thought maybe things would be different now than in high school. If this room right now is any indication, though, it’s going to be exactly the same as high school, right down to the participants.

“Yea…” He hears Kai mutter shakily, followed by an awkward laugh.

It’s silent, until Yeonjun decides to completely disregard the entire goings-on around him, and instead revisit their topic from earlier, teasing Beomgyu about the time he’d seen him in a beret and asking if he was trying to impress all his fine arts buddies.

Beomgyu retorts that at least he didn’t dye his hair to impress anyone in his club, causing an entire uproar about how Yeonjun had dyed his hair pink long before meeting Jimin, and Beomgyu saying he saw him blonde at orientation, which Yeonjun somehow takes as definitive proof that Beomgyu was checking him out there.

Namjoon walks in just then, already seeming relatively tipsy, and gasps at seeing both Kai and Soobin.

“The best buds are here!!!”

Jimin frowns, looking confused, to say the least.

“Wooo, now it’s a party,” he says, grabbing Soobin’s arm and pulling him around the counter, then pulling Kai in with his other, only letting go to throw his arms around both their shoulders and squeeze tightly.

“You two are the best. My trusty heirs… the best of pairs. Sorry, I just got out of poetry club.”

Oh my god.

“I’m normally better… I’ve had a few drinks. Anyway, I’m glad you two are here, I had a lot of ideas for the benefit I wanted to run by you and see what you’d come up with since we talked last, and also I thought of a project that might be fun to do for-”

“Ookay, no, I’m introducing Soobin to Jungkookie!” Jimin grabs Soobin and pulls him from Namjoon’s clutches and he offhandedly thinks that he may not know him well but this man is an angel.

Jimin holds onto his arm with one hand and points the other at Namjoon.

“This is a party, you weirdo, do you not get enough of your club talk every other hour of every other day?! Kai,” he switches to pointing his finger at him, “You don’t have to take that either, Namjoon’s successor or not, don’t be a workaholic like he is.” He switches back to pointing at Namjoon and finishes with, “ **It’s a party,** we’re here to have **fun**.”

Namjoon just blinks a few times, while Kai starts waving his hands back and forth.

“Ahh, no, I don’t mind!”

Soobin thinks he looks fake, as always, but doesn’t have too much time to ruminate on it, as Jimin just tells him to suit himself and drags Soobin out of the room, still clinging onto his arm.

He looks back at Yeonjun, who doesn’t even notice him being dragged out, too busy having apparently made himself jealous with the scenario his own brain had thought up earlier, specifically to tease Beomgyu. He’s shouting, “No, it’s fine, I’m sure whoever you were trying to impress in your fine arts club doesn’t have the same hair color as ANYONE on campus! Oh, and I guess he’s never had to ask you what all the fine arts are either, sorry I can’t be him!”

He quickly accepts that Yeonjun isn’t going to be of much help at this party, even if he was the one that dragged him here.

But then, for whatever reason, his eyes shift over to Kai, who looks back at him quickly and looks away, nodding along to whatever Namjoon is saying.

It’s… odd, to say the least, that his mind’s apparent second choice for comfort in this social situation is his worst enemy. But then, he guesses he is technically the one he knows second best here.

And maybe there’s something oddly comforting about already having the worst possible opinion you could of a person, and vice versa. There’s sure as hell not any standard left to uphold there. Nobody to have to try to impress.

All that aside, he doesn’t have the comfort of his best friend _or_ his worst enemy now, as he’s led through the living room by Yeonjun’s much cooler friend, weaving in and out of all his ( _also_ much cooler) friends.

Finally, Jimin brings them to a stop behind a guy in a black T-shirt at least two sizes too large for him, with half his hair pulled into a little ponytail high up on his head.

He seems to be in the middle of a conversation, but Jimin tugs on his sleeve anyway, saying, “Jungkookie” loudly enough to cut them off. He turns around, giving Soobin a view of his multiple earrings and hand tattoos, and he thinks maybe his impression he got from the back wasn’t quite accurate. He seems much more intimidating from this angle.

Soobin suddenly remembers Beomgyu’s comment about this guy punching him and quickly removes his arm from Jimin’s hold. Joke or not, he’s not willing to risk it, especially now that he’s seen the guy.

“Soobin, this is Jungkook, my pro-gamer, college drop-out boyfriend Yeonjun told you about. Jungkookie, this is Soobin, I guess… aspiring?”

“Ahh, yea… I hate school. I’d love to drop out.”

Jimin gives him an odd look and says, “Ok, well, I meant aspiring pro-gamer but… that works too, I guess.”

Soobin briefly feels embarrassed but Jungkook just sighs exhaustedly, looking as if he can hardly bear to remember it himself, and says, “Me too.”

Jimin rolls his eyes and says he’ll leave them alone to talk about game stuff, and Jungkook asks Soobin if he plays League before he even has time to panic at being left alone to converse with a cool looking stranger.

He isn’t sure how long they’ve been there when Namjoon cuts in but he feels like it might’ve been awhile from the slightly drunker state he appears in.

Needless to say, Yeonjun was right, gaming might’ve been the one ticket to making Soobin be sociable, but even aside from that, he’d decided Jungkook seemed like a pretty likable guy. 

Almost all of Yeonjun’s friends seemed… alright, at least. Even if Namjoon was- well-

A lot.

“Ahh, there he is!” He slaps one of his hands onto Soobin’s shoulder and the other onto Jungkook’s, gripping and shaking them back and forth a bit, while Kai stands behind him still, looking off to the side and gripping his own arm.

“We were looking for you, Soobinies. No, no, don’t worry, I’m not gonna bore you with club stuff, what Jimin says goes, you know.”

“Mm.” Jungkook nods his head, sagely, as if this is an indisputable fact.

“But come on, come play us in a game of beer pong, you and Jungkookie vs me and Kai.”

Kai suddenly alerts to this and says, “Ah, um, I don’t drink.”

Soobin decides it’s in his best interest to piggyback off this excuse and says, “Yea, I don’t really either.”

They all stare down at the beer Soobin is still holding and he says, “I mean. Much.”

Namjoon pats both their backs reassuringly and tells them not to worry, that they use water anyway.

“And we don’t drink it either. After that first night where Jin choked on a fuzz ball, we weren’t allowed to after.”

Namjoon fixes him with an uncharacteristically deadpan look and says, “Yea, we realized we sucked, and the ball spent way too much time on the floor for us to be drinking anything we put it in. It’s basically just regular ping pong but with cups now. But it’s still fun! Basically, what I’m saying is you guys have no excuse not to.” He looks as if something dawns on him. “Unless you guys just don’t wanna be split up? We can always change up the teams-”

“ **No** , it’s fine, ok, I’m in,” Soobin says, downing his beer and walking past Kai in the direction of the table he’d noticed the cups set up on when they’d first walked in, and the scowl he gives him as he shoves by doesn’t go unnoticed.

He hears Namjoon cheer him on from behind, as if he thinks Soobin has just suddenly gotten into the competitive spirit, and not that he isn’t just desperate to not have to work alongside Kai any more than he’s already somehow supposed to manage to for this damn club.

He and Namjoon reach the table at the same time, while Kai and Jungkook slowly wander up behind them. Despite Jungkook’s seeming unenthusiasm compared to Namjoon and their insistence that they all sucked, the two quickly jump into some sort of competitive, trash-talking mode, with Jungkook pointing at him as if he’s going down and Namjoon jumping back and forth, like they’re about to play some sort of… sport or something.

Soobin nervously taps the edge of the table and glances up at Kai, who’s standing across from him, looking down, still nervously standing with his hand holding onto his arm.

Soobin looks off to the side to stop himself from rolling his eyes. He looks exactly the way he used to when he’d weasel his way out of any team sport they were supposed to be playing in PE. He’s amazed he didn’t find some way out of this too.

Soobin is still looking away when his teammate elbows him, signifying it’s his turn. He glances across the table and throws the ball halfheartedly in the general direction of the cup formation in front of Kai and Namjoon, watching as it falls weakly toward the ground, a good ten inches away from any of them.

Jungkook yells, “agh!” and he realizes, belatedly, that he may have made the mistake of aligning himself with an actually competitive person. He thinks this possibility should’ve dawned on him when he paired up with a gamer, but, well, so is Soobin and he couldn’t care who won this thing any less. In fact, he just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Things pass back and forth like that a few turns, Soobin missing drastically every time, Kai mostly missing too, and this existing mainly, if they’re being honest, as a game between Namjoon and Jungkook.

He briefly wonders who’s winning and if it’s almost over, when a ball lands harshly in the cup right in front of him, splashing water onto his arm and on the front of his shirt. He looks up and what the hell else should he see but that asshole, now standing with his hand in front of his mouth, trying not to laugh while he stares down at the spot he made on Soobin’s shirt. His gaze drifts up and they lock eyes, Soobin’s burning with rage, which makes Kai roll his and look off to the side.

It isn’t a second later, however, when he spots a ping pong ball flying at him from his peripheral and quickly has to jump out of the way as it lands in the cup nearest to him and sends a splash up of its own.

Jungkook cheers and pumps his fist, and Namjoon is just now trying to high five Kai for his (finally) successful shot, not having had time to, with Soobin countering within a couple seconds. But neither of them get a response, their two partners now glaring each other down.

“Uh? Ok, well, my turn,” he says, but Soobin can hardly hear a thing around him anymore. All the loudness of the party has been drowned out by his blood pumping in his ears, rage thoroughly replacing his desire for this to be quickly over with, and only one desire being left instead: Destroy Huening Kai.

After he he hears Jungkook make his throw, he quickly jumps in with, “My turn,” and throws again, back to missing by a huge margin, but this time, instead of ten inches too close to him, it’s ten inches too close to Kai, making him jump out of the way again, and shoot him a look as if he’d just tried to kill him.

God, he’s so dramatic.

He quickly throws it back, without much preamble, making Soobin have to jump out of the way too.

“Ah… we’re getting worse,” Namjoon sighs, laughing awkwardly, rather he can tell that’s not what’s happening, or because he doesn’t wanna seem mad, Soobin doesn’t know. He doesn’t much care right now.

They go back and forth like this a couple rounds, a cup now being spilled all over the table and floor, the shots getting farther and farther from qualifying as actual attempts to reach any of them at all, Namjoon and Jungkook both twice having to disqualify them anyway as their elbows went over the table (which was apparently a rule here), and them slowly becoming more and more confused as the atmosphere grew tenser, for no apparent reason to the two older men at all.

Soobin’s last shot had just hit Kai smack-dab in the middle of the forehead, causing him to yell out an “agh!” and grab onto the spot it had just hit. Soobin hardly has time to smirk before another ball is flying at him in retaliation, and landing-

right in his eye.

“AGH!”

“OKAY, maybe we end this here, it was uhhh, fun while it lasted, right? Jungkook, maybe take your teammate to find some ice.”

Soobin is holding his hand tightly over his left eye and glaring as threateningly as he can at Kai with his right, Kai just frowning back with his arms crossed over his chest and a ping pong ball sized red circle on his forehead.

“Ahh, yea… Come here, Soobin.”

He grabs onto his sleeve and starts pulling him back into the kitchen, in what Soobin assumes is an attempt to guide him in case he is now blind. He turns and looks back at Kai again right before he’s pulled in and he quickly turns his head away, refusing to look back.

He notices, with his one working eye, that Yeonjun is no longer in here, nor is anyone else from earlier, other than Jimin, who is pouring some sort of iced drink from a blender into a large glass and placing a tiny umbrella atop it.

“Oh my god, what happened to him?”

“Beer pong accident,” Jungkook says plainly, as he opens the freezer, acting as if that is a completely normal sort of accident to have.

Jimin “tsk”s and says, “Well, we wouldn’t have to worry about those if you guys listened to me when I said beer pong was classless and has no place at an adult housewarming party, would we?”

Jungkook ignores him and says, “Ah. You might wanna rinse your eye first, Soobin, you guys had thrown it onto the floor a lot, and remember Jin’s fuzz ball.”

He still has no idea who he is talking about when he says that, just how many people live in this house anyway?

Jungkook is still putting ice cubes one at a time into a ziploc bag and when Soobin doesn’t move, Jimin grabs his arm and pulls him over to the sink. He turns it on and pushes Soobin’s bangs back and says, “Ok, run your eye under.”

Soobin really fucking hates parties.

—

A minute after Jimin finishes running water over his eye, and in the process, half his head, trying to suppress his laughter as Jungkook yells at him for practically drowning him, Taehyun and another guy come in and whisper something, ushering him out of the kitchen.

He does at least bother to apologize, albeit while still trying not to laugh and sipping his umbrella-topped drink through a straw. He shouts back for Jungkook to grab him a towel and dry his bangs as he leaves and Soobin thinks perhaps that guy is not the angel he thought he was when he saved him from Namjoon.

Jungkook does quickly run off and grab him a towel, bringing it back and moving to start drying his hair for him, but Soobin jerks a bit and holds his hand up to be handed the towel and do it himself. He’s had about all he can take right now and letting Yeonjun’s cool, tattooed, gamer friend dry his head off like a sad, wet dog, may really be his breaking point.

Jungkook awkwardly stands beside him for a moment, shifting back and forth on both his feet, before he asks him if he’s ok and Soobin gives the most unenthusiastic thumbs up to possibly ever occur. Still, it seems like enough to assure Jungkook, who gives him two thumbs up back and pats his shoulder twice. 

Their friend (Taehyung, he thinks) from earlier comes in and grabs him, and like that, he’s left alone in the kitchen, a towel in one hand and a bag of ice in the other. He lets out a breath and turns around on his stool, dropping both onto the counter and laying his forehead heavily onto it all in one movement.

He is so ready to get out of here. He turns his head to lay the side that’s dry onto the counter instead, the cool marble on his wet bangs starting to make him cold, and he closes his eyes.

Where is Yeonjun?

He hears someone enter the kitchen and keeps his eyes closed, hoping if he doesn’t acknowledge them that they won’t acknowledge him. Then, he thinks though, admittedly rather optimistically, what if it’s Yeonjun?

He snaps his eyes open and, well, it’s not Yeonjun. He has half a mind to close his eyes again actually, but he thinks it’s too late, as he’s already made eye contact with Kai. He’s standing in front of the refrigerator door, eyes shifting to him once in a while as he waits for the slowest stream of water in existence to fill his cup.

Soobin just huffs and rolls his eyes, turning his head to the other side and planning to ignore him til he leaves. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work out so well, as Kai walks around and stands on the other side as soon as his cup is full, causing Soobin to open his eyes again and glance up. He’s standing over him, only a couple feet away, arms crossed, and staring at what Soobin soon realizes is the bag of ice on the counter, with an unimpressed look on his face.

“What do you want,” Soobin mumbles, closing his eyes again.

“...Why is your hair all wet.”

He clenches his fist and mutters through gritted teeth, “Because _somebody_ hit me in the eye with a dirty-ass ping pong ball that Jimin thought he had to rinse off of half my face.”

He’s expecting him to start yelling at him or to defend himself, or… something. Anything. But when it’s silent for a few too many moments, he opens his eyes again, tilting his head to look up and see if he’s still standing there.

He is. And he’s staring at him, which briefly prompts Soobin to wanna call him a creep or something similar for watching him lie there with his eyes closed, but he’s thrown off by the way he’s looking at him. It’s not angry necessarily, like he’d expected, or even the cold stare he’d been giving him since the day they met again in the club room. No, it’s different. Almost blank, but… not. No, there’s definitely _something_ there, but hell if Soobin knows what it is.

“I didn’t mean to,” He finally says, quietly. “You started it anyway.”

Soobin flies back up into a sitting position at that, pointing at Kai’s face.

“You started by splashing me!”

“You think I strategically threw my ping pong ball at the perfect angle into the exact cup needed to splash you?! I couldn’t even make half my shots, and you think I could do that?!”

Soobin freezes for a moment, staring at him, then snaps out of it and turns his head away, muttering, “Pft, you think you made half those shots?”

He scoffs drly. “Well, maybe if I were aiming for you.”

“Ah-HAH!!!” Soobin spins back around, pointing his finger even more closely into his face this time.

Kai just looks at him, arms still crossed, and back to that same cold stare he’s been giving him since the first day. They’re closer now, and the longer the silence stretches on, Soobin starts to lose his nerve, and gulps, lowering his finger slightly.

“Forget it. There’s no point in talking to you.”

He picks his cup of water back up off the counter, and Soobin scoffs, mumbling, “whatever,” and watching him walk out.

What’s he mean by that, anyway? ...Like it’s his fault.

—

After another few minutes of moping in the kitchen, avoiding the people coming in to get drinks, Soobin decides to go mope elsewhere. And by elsewhere he means hopefully somewhere Yeonjun might be, so they can get the hell out of here.

He ambles around the walls in the living room, now seemingly darker, definitely with more people, and definitely louder, between the music and the talking. 

There are so many people, and yet, not a single one of them is Yeonjun. He finally settles in an empty corner where he has a view of the entire room, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. You’d really think being this tall would give him more of an advantage to finding people in a crowded room.

Before his eyes can finish scanning the room, they land on Kai right in the middle, surrounded by Namjoon, Taehyung, and two of their other friends who are dancing like, well, like idiots. Namjoon starts laughing as Taehyung and one of the others grab the younger man’s arms and try to get him to dance with them. He pulls his one arm away to cover his mouth as he laughs, then the other to wave it back and forth in refusal, so they all decide to start jumping up and down in a circle around him instead as he cracks up.

Soobin watches til Kai starts shyly swaying back and forth between them and laughing again as they all cheer and grab his hands, moving them back and forth like some adults dancing with a child at a wedding or something. 

He rolls his eyes and walks into the other room, having seen enough of that. Of course someone like him wouldn’t be bothered by their disastrous ping pong game or their argument. What was Soobin expecting, him to be cowering in a corner somewhere, the way that Soobin himself was? Ha. Right.

The truth is that Kai has everyone wrapped around his finger, just the way he did in high school, and he wouldn’t give a shit about a single thing that happened between him and some asshole, like Soobin. Why would he?

He isn’t sure why that bothers him.

It doesn’t.

He just wants to find Yeonjun and get the fuck out of this party.

He wanders through the dining room, where the less extroverted people seem to be, just sitting around and talking, a few playing a game at the table. He doesn’t bother looking too hard for his friend in this room, for obvious reasons.

He checks briefly on the deck, but there aren’t many people out there, and some are most definitely in a state that Soobin doesn’t feel like looking too closely at. He doesn’t think Yeonjun came to this party to hook up with girls any more than he did to play a card game in a quiet room, anyway.

Finally, he moves onto what appears to be a whole second living room right across from the first, but what does he know, he isn’t rich. (Just how rich are these guys, anyway?) It could be some sort of gaming room, he thinks, when he notices everyone gathered around an Xbox and the biggest TV screen he’s seen in his life that isn’t in an actual movie theater. It’s a little louder in here, the music still reaching this room, everyone either shouting over it as they stand around trying to make conversation, or shouting at the Xbox. This room, he determines, would most definitely be more likely to hold Yeonjun.

He walks through slowly, sticking to the walls, just like he did in the living room, scanning over everyone sitting around the Xbox, everyone standing around talking, everyone sitting on the couches talking. Finally, he gets to a loveseat pushed against the wall, toward the corner of the room. It’s out of the way enough that it isn’t in any direct lighting, which could be why he didn’t notice at first. Or it could be that Yeonjun isn’t exactly visible, as he has an entire Choi Beomgyu straddling his lap, that round chestnut head of his hiding the other almost completely from sight. Turns out Soobin was just looking for the wrong person, he guesses.

He stares for a moment longer than he really wants to, cursing the one part of Yeonjun he can see enough of to recognize, his hand, wearing the many bracelets he’d agonized over which of to wear earlier that night, now running up and down the dark haired boy’s back as he kisses him rather forcefully. Beomgyu’s got both his hands gripped into the very pink hair he’d been making fun of him for earlier, pulling him in closer, and Soobin thinks that he doesn’t get it. How did they go from that to this?

By the time Yeonjun’s hands travel down from the top of his back, where they’d been resting briefly on his shoulder blades, to the bottom of his sweater, where they start making their way underneath it, Soobin decides he needs to get the hell out of there and rushes back into the living room.

He doesn’t get much respite, however, as the moment he crosses from one room into the other, he sees Taehyun and Kai pushing a large cardboard box toward the center, and Jimin pushing Jungkook up to it. Soobin squints at the box, trying to find out what’s inside, and he blinks a few times, taken aback, when he sees it’s what looks to be a black and purple gaming chair. 

Taehyun and Kai bought Jungkook an entire gaming chair? An entire nice, _extremely_ _expensive looking_ , gaming chair? How? Why? Are they even that close? Does Kai even game? He never asked. But then, why would he. He doesn’t seem like he would anyway, but… maybe Taehyun does.

Taehyun and Kai really bought Jungkook an entire gaming chair. Together. Yeonjun was wrong, “not forty” _his ass_ , this really was the sort of housewarming party you brought presents to. 

Everyone around him was cheering and clapping now, Jimin pulling on Jungkook’s long sleeve and jumping up and down excitedly, as Jungkook stood there, mouth and eyes completely round in shock. Taehyun laughed and Kai started taking pictures, trying to hold in his laughter enough to take a good one.

Soobin stood, frozen on the spot, feeling like an idiot. He didn’t belong at this party. He didn’t have any friends to dance with. Didn’t have anyone to make out in a corner with. And didn’t even bring a gift. 

He stared at Kai, who Jimin was now coming to put his arm around, the other around Taehyun, and he kissed them both on the side of the head, making Kai get embarrassed and quickly grab the spot with his hand, eyes huge.

Yea, he didn’t have any of that. All he had was his high school arch-nemesis who every single person here loved. An arch-nemesis who, he realizes for the first time in all these years, might not even consider him any sort of nemesis at all. Might not consider him even as much as an enemy, or a rival. Because he might not care about Soobin or what the hell he does at all. Why would he, when, whatever Kai did to get it, rather Soobin thought it was deserved or not, he was so loved.

A nuisance, that might be all he is. To Kai. To any of these people. Maybe even to Yeonjun.

He turns to the door, which conveniently seems to be close enough to make an escape without many people noticing. But their housemate, Taehyung is standing back, only a few feet away from him, to take a video of the entire thing, and he’s sure he’d see, and possibly tell the others.

Soobin looks down at his wrist, thinking for a moment, scowl on his face. Finally, he walks the few steps it takes to get to where the other man is standing, and taps him on the shoulder. He looks over at Soobin and blinks curiously.

“Happy, uh… happy housewarming.”

And with that, he hands him his wristwatch, bows, and walks out the front door.

—

“What the hell are you doing over here? Homework? Whoa.”

Yeonjun walks over and sits next to his friend, who’s writing something in his notebook on the final row of bleachers in their high school gymnasium.

“Huh? No, this is my excuse to get out of running the mile today.” He sighs and puts his pen down. “That asshole said no more getting out of P.E. unless I have a note from a parent,” he grumbles.

“‘That asshole,’ as in, our P.E. teacher? Who’s right down there?”

“Yea, him.” Soobin groans and gets back to writing it.

Yeonjun stares silently over at him for a moment, before asking, “Do you see where I’m going with this?”

Soobin waves his hand dismissively in Yeonjun’s face.

“He’s not even looking.”

“Ok… And it looks like you didn’t even bother to change your handwriting. And you started the note ‘I’ and then crossed it out to write ‘Soobin.’”

Soobin shushes him, the way you might a person who was talking to you loudly while you had a headache, and tells him it doesn’t matter. He stands up, reads over it once, quickly, and says, “Alright, I’m taking it to him,” before bounding down the steps.

Yeonjun sighs and follows slowly after him, then sits on the bottom bleacher and watches him give his note to their teacher. The man just stares at it for a moment with an unimpressed look on his face, sighs, tells Soobin, “whatever,” and then waves him away.

Soobin walks over to Yeonjun, sitting back down next to him and saying, “see?”

“I sure do, although I can hardly believe it with my own two eyes.” He pats the black haired boy on his shoulder. “You’re a real interesting guy, Soobin.”

Soobin exhales and leans back, his elbows propped onto the bleacher behind him.

“I’m not interesting, they’ve just given up on me.”

“Still, a feat in itself. I wish I could get them to give up on me, so I could drop out of basketball.”

“Stop being so good at things. Anyway, I thought you said maybe you liked basketball?”

“Well, I like being good at things. But then, I’m good at everything…”

“Ok,” Soobin mumbles, and rolls his eyes.

“And anyway, I’d rather concentrate on dance. I don’t wanna get to fucking college and still be playing basketball.”

“Wow, the idea of playing any sport at all for that long almost knocked me into a comatose state.”

“Wow, big word.” Yeonjun claps.

Soobin rolls his eyes again, and this time they land back on their gym teacher, only now he isn’t alone. Kai is there, looking much like he did that first day Soobin saw him talking to their homeroom teacher to get himself out of detention. He’s rubbing the back of his head and gesticulating wildly with his hands, that same way he always (annoyingly) seems to, waving them a couple times toward his ankle, then clasping them together and nodding his head to their teacher. He seems to wait for him to respond, then bows and walks to sit an appropriate distance down the bleachers from Soobin.

Soobin squints his eyes, watching him suspiciously. Yeonjun, who had continued on complaining about basketball, finally takes note that he isn’t being listened to, and asks, “hello?” then leans forward to see what he’s looking at.

“Oh god. **No** , Soobin. **No**. Not again.”

He flips his head around, gaping offendedly at his blue haired friend.

“What do you mean, ‘not again,’ I didn’t even say anything!”

“Yea, but you were about to.” He sighs and rolls his eyes, leaning back and facing the ceiling. “And I’m just not in the mood for any insane rants about Kai right now.”

“Insane rants, huh,” he scoffs. “Is that what you think of me.”

“Most definitely.”

“They’re not insane, you know he just bugs me and I don’t understand why n-!”

“Why nobody else sees it, yes, yes, I got it.”

Soobin narrows his eyes and grumbles, “You’re such an asshole. Fine. Watch me not say a thing about Huening Kai this entire period,” and leans forward, chin propped up on the palm of his hand.

“Mhm…” Yeonjun replies, sounding doubtful.

“What are you doing over here? Shouldn’t you change?” Soobin hears faintly, coming from the direction Kai had been sitting in.

“Ah, no, I’m not running…”

“You’re not running?”

“No, I asked him if I could sit out.”

“And he said yes, just like that?”

Soobin’s head quickly snaps back in the direction Kai is sitting, all thoughts of not thinking about him throughout the rest of the period gone at the mention of such injustice. Of course Soobin would have to bring a note and all Kai would have to do is ask sweetly and cutely enough, _of course_.

When he looks back over to eavesdrop on the conversation, though, he notices it’s between Kai and probably the last person in school he would be expecting to fall for his bullshit. Probably the last person in school he’d be expecting to talk to him _at all_.

“...Kang Taehyun?”

“What?” Yeonjun asks him. “Isn’t that that boy you cheated off of? What about him?”

“Yea, and Kai cheated off of… So why are they now over there talking like they’re best friends?”

“Oh, for chrissake,” Yeonjun mumbles, before looking over in the same direction Soobin is once again. “...Wow, those are two best friends if I’ve ever seen any.”

“Right?! Which doesn’t make sense!”

Yeonjun shushes him when Taehyun looks over at the shouting, and whispers “I was joking,” before rolling his eyes. “They appear to be having a totally casual conversation. Whiiich, now appears to be ending,” he says, as Taehyun walks away.”

“Yea, but why would he be having a casual conversation with him at all? Shouldn’t he hate him? I mean, I’m pretty sure he hates me, and you sure don’t see him coming up and asking why I’m sitting out of P.E.”

“Ok, but do you _really_ not see why somebody wouldn’t ever possibly need to ask you that?”

Soobin just grimaces and waves at Yeonjun to shut him up.

“Anyway, it’s weird… This is exactly what I mean when I say he somehow manages to get literally anyone and everyone on his side, even if it makes no sense at all.”

“Ok, you know when you first started talking about this I assumed you just thought he was manipulative or something, but the longer it goes on I start to worry you might think he’s some sort of alien with mind control abilities. I think I need you to tell me that you know America is not a different planet now.”

“He’s not from America.”

“Huh?”

“Well, he lived there when he was little, but that’s not where he moved from when he came here, he was living in China before here.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“I- ...Don’t.” Soobin pauses a moment, before jolting up from his seat and standing in front of Yeonjun. “ANYWAY, why should he get to get out of running just because he asked nicely, when I have to get an entire note written from my mom first every single time now?!”

“...Soobin, you just wrote that note yourself 5 minutes ago and I watched you.”

“Ok, ugh, it’s the… principal.”

“...Uh-huh. Alright, well I’m gonna go get changed.” He hops up and waves back as he walks off, saying, “Enjoy your breakdown~”

Soobin’s eye twitches and he sits back down, pouting slightly, before glancing back over at Kai.

He’s sure he’d given some sort of excuse about his ankle, if him gesturing to it while prattling on to their teacher was any indication. The same ankle he was now swinging back and forth while he wrote something in his notebook, lying open in his lap, on top of one of their textbooks.

Soobin scowls, watching it swing on and on and thinks about how if this were him in this exact situation he would’ve been busted immediately. But they just don’t care with Kai. Nobody ever does, cause he’s just too damn… He squints his eyes at the boys’ feet, which are now both swinging back and forth. _Adorable,_ he thinks, in disgust, and rolls them, looking away.

If only Soobin were more of a suck-up, he guesses. If only he tried to be a little more sickeningly cute. But he just doesn’t have that in him, and such is life, it’s just not fucking fair. What can he do about it?

He turns back and watches him for a while, staring at those swinging feet before he suddenly has an idea and gets up before he has a chance to do anything like, perhaps, think about it.

He walks up to their teacher just as Yeonjun walks out of the locker room, and says, “Sir?” waiting for him to turn around. The man sees Soobin there again and sighs.

“What now?”

“I was just remembering you said we could all play dodgeball sometime this week, and since so many students can’t run the mile I was wondering if maybe you’d want us to do that today instead.”

Yeonjun’s mouth falls open at that.

“Oh. I did say that, didn’t I...” Their teacher looks nearly as confused as Yeonjun does, but he seems to be thinking it over anyway. He sighs. “Alright, that may not be a bad idea. Go get changed.”

Soobin walks toward the locker room, Yeonjun quickly walking in-step with him and whisper-yelling, “What the hell are you doing?! Are you having an _actual_ breakdown?! You’re asking to play dodgeball?!”

“ALRIGHT, EVERYBODY, CHANGE OF PLANS, WE’RE PLAYIN DODGEBALL,” he hears the teacher shout behind them, subsequently followed by cheering. “Huening Kai, go get changed! Your ankle should be able to survive this one.”

Yeonjun freezes in the doorway as Soobin makes it into the locker room and yanks his shirt over his head, pulling the locker his very unused gym clothes are in open with the other hand.

“No…” the blue haired boy whispers, in disbelief.

“Soobin, did you-?”

Just then, Kai walks past him and pulls a locker opposite Soobin open rather harshly. Yeonjun stares back and forth between them, as they sit across the room from each other, backs facing the other as they get changed, an uncomfortable tension filling the entire room. He swallows dryly and decides to back out of the room and go wait for the, clearly impending, battle. He wants no part in this.

—

Soobin groans, staring up at the bright fluorescent light above him and squinting his eyes. He grabs his head and sits up slowly.

“What… happened.”

“You suck at dodgeball, that’s what happened,” he hears to his right and turns more quickly than intended, making him groan in pain and squeeze his eyes closed, grabbing onto his head and rubbing his temples. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. He squints one eye back open and stares at the bed across from him.

Why is he in a room with Huening Kai?

“Ugh.” The other boy rolls his eyes and sits back in bed, pulling the thin, papery sheets back up over his legs. “Stop acting like you don’t remember anything.”

“Remember what?!” Soobin looks up at him and yells, instantly regretting it.

“Whatever the hell that disaster you planned in there was! What’s wrong with you, anyway? Did you seriously do that on purpose? Are you that stupid?”

Soobin looks taken aback, barely managing not to gasp at the insult, but Kai continues on.

“I mean, do you think before you do anything at all? Or do you just decide to do whatever the most asshole-ish thing that pops into your head at the time is with no further thought to it whatsoever? Or,” he laughs, with little to no humor in it, “maybe you just forgot that you also suck at dodgeball?”

Soobin stares at him silently, eyes squinted and mouth hanging wide open, looking confused as hell, and Kai eyes him suspiciously, before sighing.

“You’re telling me you really don’t remember.”

Soobin blinks.

“Alright, well, from what I can tell, you had some brilliant plan to get the teacher to make us play dodgeball instead of run, so that I, and also YOU, which I feel like maybe you forgot about, would have to actually play instead of sitting out. You instantly started targeting me so I obviously got fed up and started trying to hit you too. But we _both suck at dodgeball,_ so we missed every time, til someone else hit us both simultaneously, we both got knocked out, and we got sent here.” He gestures around to their room in the nurse’s office. “And like 3 people had to drag you cause you wouldn’t wake up at all and you’re huge.”

Soobin starts to yell something in his defense but immediately cuts himself off as he starts recalling the events leading up to his knockout and puts his head into his hands in embarrassment. 

He is… really an idiot sometimes.

“Hm.” Kai leans back onto the wall behind his bed. “I guess you really didn’t remember.”

“Ugh…” Soobin groans in response and Kai simply replies with, “yea.” 

It’s silent for a few moments after that, til Kai clears his throat and starts speaking again in a small voice. 

“Did you really do all that just so you could hit me? What… was the point?”

Soobin sighs and brings his hands down, lying back on the bed and resting his arm over his forehead instead.

“I didn’t do it so I could hit you. I did it cause I noticed you lied about being injured to get out of running, and it wasn’t fair that he let you without a second thought. Then, once we were playing, I just… ended up wanting to hit you.”

“God, you’re such an asshole.”

“I am not an asshole! You lied and got your way anyway, just like… ugh, just like always.”

“I wasn’t lying just to get my way, I had to study! And what’s your excuse, anyway? You were sitting out too.”

“I have… allergies. Wait, asthma.”

“Ugh,” Kai says, and rolls his eyes, lying back on his bed too and turning away so he isn’t facing him.

“I do.”

“Ok, whatever.”

It’s silent again for another few moments, but Soobin gets that same familiar urge he got the first time he met him, when he, for whatever reason… could not… stop… talking. But, he’s curious.

“What do you have to study for, anyway?” he mutters. “Can’t you just cheat some more?”

“You’re really saying that to me? Can’t you?”

“Sure, but I’m not gonna get away with it, not like you are.”

The boy across from him sighs exhaustedly for about the fifth time since Soobin woke up here, and he wonders is he really that exasperated with him?

“I don’t wanna cheat anymore. I’m studying so that I don’t have to.”

Soobin stares over at his back for a moment, almost feeling guilty, but still more curious than anything.

“ _Have to_? Why did you _have to_ to begin with?”

When he doesn’t get a response, his mouth continues on, trying to fill the space, without awaiting permission from his brain.

“I mean, I don’t study either, but I sure wouldn’t say I _have to_ cheat just because I’m home gaming all night instead of studying-”

“You-” Kai starts, sitting up, jaw squared, and staring at him for a few seconds. Finally, he huffs and shakes his head, shoulders falling a little.

“There’s no point in talking to you.”

Soobin furrows his brow, blinking a couple times in confusion. Before he can get a chance to question him and further, however, the curtain to their room is pushed aside quickly, startling them both a little.

“Get up, idiot, I’m here to take your dumb ass home and make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

Yeonjun stomps over to him, two backpacks thrown onto his back, and grabs his arm, in a way that Soobin isn’t sure if it’s meant to help him up or punish him.

Soobin looks over at Kai, who just looks away again, staring at the wall by his bed as if he’s studying one of the dumb posters on it.

“Uh.” Soobin shakes his head and looks at Yeonjun, who looks… done, if there were any way to put it. “I… need to get my stuff.”

“I have it. Let’s go.” And with that, he begins dragging him out by the arm. He turns quickly, right before shutting the curtain again, and says, “Bye Kai, hope your dick’s alright.”

Soobin startles at that, Kai coughing and sputtering a few times in the room behind them.

Yeonjun continues dragging him out into the main office, where the nurse is sitting at her desk, but before they can tell her they’re leaving, Kang Taehyun of all people walks in.

“I’m here to pick up Kai?”

“Oh, he’s right back there, behind the second curtain. If he needs another ice pack, he can get one on the way out.”

“Mhm,” Taehyun says simply, and walks by them.

“I’m taking Soobin,” Yeonjun tells her, bowing.

“Alright, just make sure you keep an eye on him. He can take pain relievers as needed for his headache.”

“Got it, thank you.” He bows again and drags him out, shutting the door behind them and walking down the hall.

“That’s-” he pulls his arm out of Yeonjun’s grip so he can gesture vaguely back in the direction Kai is in. “That’s all that happened to him?! He gets whacked in the crotch and I get a whole entire concussion?!”

“Listen, that guy stayed with your dumb, concussed ass til school was over to make sure you didn’t die til I got there, so give it a rest and let’s go.” Yeonjun grabs his arm again and continues dragging him toward the side exit of the school.

“He… he was just in there cause he got hit too.”

“That’s not what the nurse said. She said he coulda left at least an hour ago. So stop being an asshole.”

That… doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that? Why would he do anything at all to help Soobin when he was the idiot who got them into that predicament in the first place?

Maybe the nurse was wrong. Maybe Kai just… wanted an excuse to not have to go back to class, or… something. That’s all that could possibly make sense in this situation. Right?

He looks back down the hall as he hears the door open behind them and sees Kai exit with Taehyun, walking in-step with him down the hall in the opposite direction. 

He frowns at their backs til they disappear around a corner and Yeonjun has to drag him extra hard to move him from his spot out the door, complaining the entire time as he does.

It just doesn’t make any sense. In fact, Soobin decides, definitively, nothing about Huening Kai makes any sense to him at all.

—

Soobin rests, forehead lying heavily against the iron table in their courtyard. It isn’t the most comfortable, the intricate design digging patterns into his face, but he can’t much bring himself to care.

Last night was… rough, to say the least. He wishes he had being hungover as an excuse, but honestly he’d hardly even had anything to drink. And yet, still, his headache persists.

He’d taken the subway home and collapsed into bed without as much as playing a single game or getting undressed first, and he hadn’t stayed at the party very long either, so he’d gone to bed at a relatively normal time. But he slept like shit.

For whatever reason, his brain chose that opportune time to conjure up memories of dumb shit he had done in high school that he honestly hadn’t thought of in years. Didn’t necessarily want to, if he’s being honest. He’s an idiot. Well, was. ...Is? He doesn’t know. All he knows is, waking up, he felt the farthest thing from rested, realized he’d already missed his first class, and has been stewing in his own second-hand embarrassment at his high school self ever since.

Then, of course, the tinge of first-hand embarrassment at his current self isn’t making things any easier, that’s for sure. **No more parties** , he’s decided. That’s final. It doesn’t matter how persuasive Yeonjun is. 

He hears someone clear their throat beside him and slowly looks up.

Ugh. The last person he wanted to see right now. Or, well… ever.

“What are you doing?” Kai asks him, after staring at him for a moment with a confused frown on his face.

“Resting.”

“You have… table marks all over your forehead.”

Soobin just sighs and stares at him with a look on his face that says he truly could not care any less.

“Alright. Anyway, well,” he holds out Soobin’s watch. Or, well, Taehyung’s watch. “Here. Jimin told me to give this to you.”

Soobin stares at it for a moment, before looking back up at Kai.

“Why? I gave it to Taehyung.”

“Yea… Jimin says it was your own watch that he’d seen you take off when he put you under the sink, so he didn’t know why you’d given it to him. The second Taehyung showed it to him, he snatched it away.”

Soobin just groans and grabs the watch quickly out of his hand, leaning his head back on the table with his arms laid flat out on top of it, one hand still tightly gripping the watch.

Kai is silent for a moment, simply standing and observing him, just like he was in that kitchen last night. Soobin briefly thinks that he should be embarrassed at how many times this guy has seen him in such a state, and it just makes him wanna keep his head down even more.

“Why’d you do that? Why’d you give him your own watch?”

“Ugh,” is the only response Soobin gives.

“Alright, well… we were supposed to have the meeting with Namjoon today about the benefit, but I noticed you weren’t in your first class, so I figured you must’ve been hungover.”

Soobin peeks an eye up to look at him, wondering how the hell he knew that.

“I went to look for you there to give you the watch. Anyway, so I asked him if he’d be able to do tomorrow instead. Does that work for you?”

Soobin nods slowly.

“Alright, see you then,” Kai tells him evenly, and walks off.

Soobin just groans more and places his forehead firmly back onto the table.

—

“I’m sorryyy, how many times do I have to tell you!”

Soobin just glares at Yeonjun and moves down the line of their campus cafeteria.

Yeonjun deflates and turns back to him.

“Ok, LISTEN… to be fair, I came and looked for you after you left the kitchen, but you looked like you were having so much fun playing beer pong with Kai, I didn’t wanna interrupt.”

Soobin scoffs, loudly and dryly.

“Right. Yea. So fun. The guy hit me in the eye, then your buddy, Jimin, tried to drown me.”

“...See… fun?” Yeonjun tries, weakly, and Soobin angrily moves down the buffet line even more, trying to escape him, yet Yeonjun follows.

“Listen, man, I really thought you seemed like you were having an ok time, and I was literally one room over, I thought you’d be able to find me!”

“Yea, wow, why couldn’t I find you, making out in a dark corner, completely covered by Round Head?”

Yeonjun looks away sheepishly, scratching his forehead with one finger and blushing.

“Yea, sorry you had to see that. Or you’re welcome? ANYWAY, we didn’t plan to do that! And that’s not even what we were doing at first! We went to play Xbox, things got heated, you know, as they do-”

“I don’t.”

“-And next thing you know, we’ve stopped arguing about whether button mashing is cheating or not, and we’re making out! We only moved to the dark corner cause the guys who were waiting to play after us were getting kinda pissed…” he trails off, remembering. 

“But see, so I didn’t plan to do any of that. And we stopped and went to look for you after not very long anyway, but you were already gone.”

Soobin just stares at his friend, disgusted.

“How the hell did you go from arguing about an Xbox game to making out?”

“Sometimes that’s just how it goes, man.”

Soobin rolls his eyes and pays, waiting for Yeonjun to pay at the register beside him.

“Seems unhealthy.”

“Nah, we never actually fight for real. It’s all just, you know,” he waves his hand around. “Foreplay.”

“Ugh. Gross.” Soobin goes and walks to a table, trying his best to leave Yeonjun in the dust, but he follows and sits across from him, Soobin rolling his eyes.

“Like it isn’t bad enough I had to see you right in the act last night, now I need to hear the details of all your sexcapades too?”

“God, you are so dramatic. I mean, it’s just… flirting, you know. And I’ve told you how Beomgyu is, he’s so stubborn. He likes me so much and just refuses to admit it.” Yeonjun sighs. “All that tension’s gotta come out somehow.”

Soobin picks up a spoonful of ice cream, thinking for a moment before he shoves it messily into his mouth.

“Yea, I don’t get it.”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t.”

Soobin glares at him.

“Ok, ok, sorry. Anyway, you forgive me?”

Soobin ponders on it for a moment, continuing to eat.

“Sure. But I’m not going to anymore parties.”

“Whaaat, come on!! I’ll stick with you next time, the entire time.”

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t even mean just with you. I’m not going to any at all, I hate them and don’t belong at any.”

Yeonjun sighs, then starts eating, deciding to leave it alone for now.

“So did Kai find you earlier? He was looking for you to give you your watch back?”

Soobin silently holds up his wrist to show Yeonjun.

“Good..? Why’d he have your watch, anyway?”

“...I gave it to Taehyung.”

“What? Why?”

He groans and mulls over whether or not he should tell him for a moment.

“Well, Kai and Taehyun were bringing out that gaming chair they got for Jungkook-”

“Yea, the one Jimin got, go on.”

Soobin pauses, spoon slowly dropping into his ice cream bowl as his hand goes slack.

“Wait. Jimin got it?”

“Yea, they’re dating, remember? He just reached 2 million followers on Twitch so he wanted to get him a nice one for the new house.”

“...Ah.” Soobin mutters, staring off into the distance.

“Why, what’d you think?”

It’s silent for a moment, then he finally sighs and tells him, “That Kai and Taehyun bought it and it _was_ a housewarming party where we were supposed to bring gifts, so I gave Taehyung my watch and left.”

Yeonjun laughs, mouth full of food, and starts choking.

Soobin just glares at him as he continues coughing, and decides that if he goes, he goes.

—

“You feeling better, Soobinies?” Namjoon asks him as he walks into the empty (apart from he and Kai) clubroom, pulling out a chair and putting it at the end of the table so they can both see him, then sitting down.

Soobin blinks a few times, wondering for what he’s sure is the hundredth time since meeting this man what he is talking about, before he suddenly recalls that Kai had told him he was hungover and that was why they needed to reschedule.

He supposes he shouldn’t say, “Oh no, I was actually just tired after a long night of reliving my embarrassing past where I tried and failed to take Kai down in a poorly thought-out dodgeball match in high school, where I first decided we were enemies, which we are by the way, but instead ended up with a concussion and feeling immensely confused (which is a symptom, don’t worry, high school Soobin googled it.)

So, instead, he says, “yea.”

Namjoon pats his shoulder, saying he guesses he’d really meant it when Soobin had told them he didn’t drink much, then getting right into all his talking points. Which were… a lot.

He fills them in on his project idea he’d tried to tell them about at the party, where they write about a time, personal or otherwise, that bullying has affected their lives, then gets into talking about the benefit.

The first time Soobin notices he’s talking about it as if the two of them are supposed to be there, Soobin’s hand, which had been desperately attempting to take notes as Namjoon prattled on and on, flinches, and he sits frozen for a moment. Kai notices and stares across the table at him, giving him a curious look, but Soobin just snaps out of it and continues on writing, feeling as though he’d missed ten paragraphs in those few seconds.

After what seems like many hours, but Soobin is shocked to learn was only slightly under a single hour, according to his watch that had found its way back to him, Namjoon quickly goes over the clubs from other schools and organizations they’re supposed to meet with to collaborate on planning for the benefit, gives them their contact information and leaves.

As they’re walking out of the clubroom, Kai turns to him and says, “What was that?”

“What was what?” he asks disinterestedly, honestly just wanting to get out of there and go home and game. Between spending time with Kai, spending time with Namjoon, doing actual schoolwork and doing all this EXTRA work that he for whatever reason _voluntarily agreed_ to do, he is, suffice it to say, exhausted.

“You looked weird for a second when he was talking about the benefit.”

Soobin has to stop himself from offendedly saying, ‘ _You look weird_ ,’ in his tired, irritable state.

“Oh,” he mumbles, chewing on his lip for a second. “Well he was talking like we’d be at the benefit, but… I’m not going to that.”

“What?” Kai’s eyes widen and he stops walking, then runs to catch up with him. “Why not?”

“I’m not… going to anymore parties. And a benefit is just a fancy party. Which is even worse than, say, a housewarming party.”

Kai is quiet, walking along with him and looking up and down his face while Soobin stares straight ahead, singularly focused on getting the hell off of campus and home to his room.

“Did you really have that bad of a time at the party?”

“What party?”

The brown haired boy stares at him, looking unimpressed.

Soobin sighs, stopping in front and turning around to face him.

“What should I have liked about that party, anyway? Getting hit in the eye? Getting practically drowned in a sink? My friend running off to make out with someone and leaving me alone, where I didn’t know anyone?”

“You could’ve- You know... me and Taehyun.”

Soobin is oddly caught between saying, “I don’t even like you guys,” and “you guys don’t even like me,” so instead he just says nothing, sighing and pulling his backpack higher onto his back.

“Didn’t you say you have another class? I’m leaving, so I don’t think you wanna follow me off campus. I’ll… talk to you about the clubs we have to contact later, I guess.”

“Oh.” Kai’s shoulders fall a little, then he takes a step back as if to signify that he is not following him. “Ok, yea.” He pauses, and they both stand there silently for a second. “Bye.”

“Bye,” he mutters back tiredly, then turns back around and walks off.

—

“Oh, you’re both here?”

“Yea… we’re both the club leaders. Well, us and also still kind of Namjoon.”

“Right, that mess.” The short haired blonde girl puffs air out and looks off to the side, Soobin’s mouth falling open in offense, even though… she has a point.”

“Aha, it’s not… as bad as it sounds,” Kai rubs the back of his head, laughing nervously.

“Sheesh, I hope not…” she mumbles. “Alright, well, follow me.”

“They follow her down the hall of their campus, Soobin noticing how much nicer it is than even theirs and understanding why Namjoon said it was imperative to get in good with them if they wanted the planning of this benefit to go well. After all, their club didn’t exactly have much to offer in the ways of event planning or budget. And probably less than ever with Soobin at the helm.

For instance, this wasn’t just any regular university they were walking down the halls of now, this was Ewha Womans University. Which was not only prestigious as hell, apparently, but also, as one might assume from the name, full of women. And Soobin was never really that great with women, if he’s being honest. And one as rude as this, he has… even less idea how to deal with.

She shouts down the hall at them, “You’re Kai, right? I think I met you for a second last year. You were helping Namjoon set up one day, right?”

“Ah, you remember! Yes, I was involved with the club last year but was only partially enrolled, so I couldn’t help too much with the benefit, unfortunately.”

“Wow…” she tsks. “A high school student. So young.”

“Oh, um.” They stop in front of a door and she turns around to them, staring judgmentally at Kai as he nervously utters, “Well not anymore.”

“Mhm… Ok, well, in here.” She turns the doorknob and throws the door open for them, Soobin catching it before it hits him in the face, eye twitching slightly.

They follow her in and sit at a table, which is all the way at the other end of the room from some girls who are sitting at another table, seemingly working on some sort of art project. Even their clubroom is twice the size of theirs.

The girl sits down at the table, gesturing for them to sit at the other end, Soobin and Kai both pulling out chairs and sitting down.

“Alright, so I know Kai, you I’ve never met before, I think.”

“Ah… That’s because I’m new. I’m Soobin. Namjoon just kind of gave the club to me on the first day I met him when we were-”

“AH- AH- AH- UM, haha he’s joking, it didn’t really go like that, ahh Soobin, you’re so funny…” Kai pushes Soobin’s arm like he just told some hilarious joke and not the actual sad truth of the matter, but when he sees Kai’s smile twitch and notices he seems to be sweating a bit, he thinks, ok, maybe the truth isn’t going to help them any in this situation.

“Sheesh…” she mumbles. “Alright, well anyway, hi Soobin, I’m Ryujin, I’m the VP of Love is Louder,” she waves. “Which one of you is the VP here?”

The two turn and look at each other, a slight panic in their eyes as they realize they’d never really thought of that. Is it neither? Both?

“Um… neither, really,” Kai finally answers.

“Huh? So what, is it more like a president and first lady scenario?”

Soobin chokes and Kai quickly waves that idea away, answering, “No, no, it’s more like… Well, Namjoon is still sort of the president, so it’s more like we’re both vice presidents, I guess.”

“Ok, where’s he then?”

“Well… he’s taking more of a back seat this year to let us start taking over, so we’ll be fully prepared for next year.”

Soobin has a brief thought that he most likely will not be here next year, but he’s certainly not gonna tell Kai or Namjoon that.

“So, should we just work with you next year instead then if you’re not prepared yet?”

Soobin looks off, rolling his eyes, and Kai quickly says, “Wait. No.”

Ryujin sighs and leans forward a bit, arms propped onto the table and fixing them with a serious look.

“Yea, guys, I’m gonna be honest. Yeji is a little afraid to work with you guys this year. We’ve worked with Kind Campaign for years on this and she doesn’t wanna let them down. We’ve only ever worked with Namjoon, who is amazing, and she said the situation now sounds, ‘precarious, at best,’ so she sent me to evaluate the situation since I’m not afraid to be mean.”

Clearly, Soobin thinks.

“And from what I’m gathering so far, it sounds pretty confusing and… unreliable.”

“It’s not!” Kai shouts a little, louder than he intended. “Here, let me show you.”

He starts digging around in his backpack Soobin had been asking him on the train ride there why he brought, getting no response, and Soobin turns back toward the table (having checked out of this conversation and turned away minutes ago) to see what he’s going to pull out.

He drops a large binder on the table with somewhat more force than would be necessary, but Soobin can tell, has seen it firsthand enough times before, that he’s a bit agitated. He starts flipping through and pulls out a piece of paper to show her.

“We don’t have to use that one, it’s just an idea, but that’s a possible graphic I had someone from our school design for the poster this year. I already have two members of the art department who have agreed to help if we take part in this, and this one has 224,000 followers on instagram, so if we use any of his designs he’ll post them on there and we’ll get that much more reach.”

He pulls out his phone, unlocking it and sliding it over in front of the girl, as if he’d already had it open on the exact page he needed.

She looks a bit dumbfounded, then picks the phone up and starts scrolling down the page.

“Also, the Gay Straight Alliance has agreed to help with the budget and anything else we need as long as we do some charity work with them, which our club tries to do every year anyway.”

It’s silent for a moment as she continues staring at his phone, then sits it on the table, making Kai quickly speak up again before she has the time to say anything.

“Also, I already have a lot of ideas.” And with that, he pushes the entire binder over, which she starts flipping through, eyes widening as it just keeps going on and on with no end in sight.

“Alright, well,” she clears her throat, closing the binder and pushing it back across the table, then scratching the side of her head. “I see who the first lady is,” and she looks at Soobin, who had been staring at Kai, mouth agape, but turns to glare at her instead.

“We both did this.”

Lies. All lies. Soobin didn’t do shit. Didn’t even know shit was being done at all. He showed up to the meetings and sat there, attempting to listen, that’s the extent of his contribution so far. Seeing all this now, he wouldn’t even dare try to claim he did anything at all. 

“We won’t be confusing and unreliable, I promise.”

She bursts out laughing, head thrown back and leaning back so far in her chair that soobin briefly imagines her falling completely out of it. Before that can happen though, she leans forward on the table, chin propped onto her hand and staring at Kai.

“Oh, you’re confusing alright. All of this,” she gestures between them, then sighs, pouting her lips and looking off to the side, mumbling, “I guess it might be pretty amusing though…”

Soobin glares her down. Kai shows up with all this shit and her reasoning for possibly agreeing to work with them is that maybe they might be amusing?

“No, this is impressive though,” she concedes. “But we already have someone in our club who has agreed to work on graphics for us, so…”

Just then, one of the girls who had been sitting at the table across the room when they’d walked in bounds up to them, holding what appears to be a kindergartener’s finger painting.

“Done!” She holds the big sheet of paper out with both hands, looking down at it proudly, a huge smile on her face.

Ryujin's eyes shoot around the paper, in what looks to be horror, not saying anything for a few moments.

“Is that a rainbow?”

“Yea. Oh, I know the colors aren’t accurate, I just really like pink, so…” she laughs and rubs the back of her head. “But I thought we could write the name of the organization inside the rainbow, but I ran out of room halfway through, so I gave up.”

It remains silent, then she looks around the table at all of them.

“So? What do you think?”

Soobin gives a slow thumbs up that Ryujin scoffs and rolls her eyes at, burying her face in her hands and roughly rubbing her face for a moment, then righting herself again and staring forward, looking serious.

“Yea, I’m gonna contact Yeji about getting you guys on the benefactor list.”

—

After walking them out of the building, Ryujin and Kai had stood and talked for a good fifteen minutes, Soobin awkwardly lingering by the gate, glancing at them from time to time. The girl seemed to be in a much better mood than when they’d first gotten there, probably happy to see that at least one of them was taking this seriously and to find that she wouldn’t have to be using some girl’s finger painting for the event’s logo.

But also, Kai just… seemed to know how to get people on his side like this, as Soobin’s stated probably a good 10 thousand times in his life by now. Probably the first he ever actually didn’t mind it so much, though. After all, what on earth would’ve happened if Soobin had shown up there on his own? Nothing he would’ve been happy to report back to Namjoon on, that’s for sure.

They’re on the subway now, having made it just before the doors closed. Soobin would’ve made more of a complaint about them almost missing it, but what can he say in this situation, how dare you take the time to do exactly what we came here today to do?

“Are you sure you don’t want the seat?” Kai asks him for the second time, knocking Soobin out of his thoughts from where he’d been standing, holding onto the bar above his head while he sways back and forth.

“I don’t care.”

“Ok.”

It’s silent for another couple minutes, before Kai’s phone vibrates and he reads it quickly then looks up, eyes filled with excitement, and holds the screen up for Soobin to see it too.

“She says Yeji agreed and will add us when she meets with them tomorrow! Ahh, Namjoon’s gonna be so relieved…” he takes the phone back and smiles at the screen for a second, before quickly replying to the text.

“Yea… I was worried there for a while… But I guess you’re still as persuasive as ever.”

Kai’s fingers pause mid-text, and his eyes shift up to Soobin, as if he’s awaiting something.

“What?” he says, frowning at him.

“I… nothing…” he looks back down, continuing to type his message out. “I was waiting for you to insult me,” he mumbles.

“I-” Soobin starts, before realizing he didn’t insult him. It was maybe the first time he’d ever described this aspect of Kai’s personality as “persuasive,” rather than “manipulative,” in fact.

Which was… definitely odd, but he guesses this was perhaps also the first time it had ever benefited Soobin himself, so.

He stares down at the top of his head for a while as his thumbs continue moving around his screen, pausing briefly after he sends it, then muttering, “I’ll tell Namjoon the good news,” and starting again.

“Mhm… good.”

It’s silent for another minute after he sends that one, then Soobin can’t hold back anymore and finally has to ask what he’d been wondering since their meeting.

“When did you do all that, anyway?”

“Hm?” He looks up. “Do what?”

“All… that. That you showed her back there.”

“Oh… all the time. I was working on it after our first meeting with Namjoon. Actually… this sounds sad probably, but I even wrote down a few ideas last year, after I helped Namjoon that day. Then, I talked to everyone about helping at the party. And they said yes pretty much immediately, because… well, maybe because they were all pretty drunk. Beomgyu and Taehyun were the art students I asked to help.”

“Wow…” Soobin stares into the distance, actually astonished. “You did all that at the party.” He sighs. “All I did was… fight with you, complain about getting wet, and then try to give someone my watch as a housewarming present…”

Kai quickly covers his mouth as air escapes while he tries to hold in a laugh.

“That’s why?”

“Yea…” Soobin wonders if he should regret telling him that.

“Wow…” he finally lowers his hand and keeps his lips pressed tightly together, trying his best to hide his smile. “Generous, though.”

Soobin rolls his eyes, huffing. “Well I didn’t exactly mean to, ok? _Anyway_ , I’m surprised you could even find Beomgyu free long enough to talk to him about anything. That’s the real impressive part.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cause? You know?”

Kai just stares at him, looking as if he very much doesn’t know.

“He was on top of Yeonjun all night?”

“ **Oh** \- Oh, I uhh… I didn’t know.”

His face is completely red now, as if Soobin just told him some extremely illicit details about something. For real? Is this how Yeonjun feels when he talks to him? Surely, even he isn’t this bad. And surely, there were, at the very least, 5 other couples making out at that party.

“You didn’t… see them?”

“No! I mean, no, I didn’t see anything like that. He definitely wasn’t on- top- uh, doing anything with anyone while I was talking to him.”

“Oh-” Soobin chokes out slightly, swallowing after to get his voice back, but he finds that it isn’t necessary anyway, as the conversation dies off after that, Kai still sitting with a red face and his hands in his lap, leg shaking up and down.

Geez, he really is worse than Soobin. Who stops an entire conversation just over something like that?

Not that it bothers him, Soobin isn’t one for long, meaningless conversations with people anyway. He’s always been more than fine with being completely silent with anyone he’s around. All the more if it’s Kai, right?

However, his fingers start tapping on the bar overhead and he soon begins feeling antsy with an unexplainable urge to say something else.

He doesn’t, but it makes him think, for the first time in a long time, about another day when he was stricken with this very same compulsion. And with the very same person. It was the only day he and Kai had ever gotten along. 

The last day, he’d thought. 

—

“Hey!” he hears Yeonjun’s voice come from behind him, before he feels an arm hook a little too tightly around his neck. “You’re alive, I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

Soobin winces in annoyance and pulls the arm off from around his neck.

“You haven’t seen me in… _a_ week.”

“Well, yea. But the real mystery is that I haven’t seen you _online_ in _a_ week.” He scratches his head and studies the black haired boy for a moment, taking in his tired eyes, messed up hair, and very rumpled hoodie. Rumpled enough, and Yeonjun knows him well enough to say this, that he can probably assume he slept in it and just kind of woke up and walked out his door. 

“Well, and that you woke up before 7 AM. That’s the biggest mystery of all. I’m actually not sure I’ve ever seen you this early, in fact, unless you’re still up.”

Soobin groans, walking up to get in line in front of a tent that’s set up outside the building they’d all arrived in front of. He isn’t sure if it’s starting to feel like Fall now or if it’s just always this cold before noon, but either way, he decides he doesn’t like it and pulls his hoodie strings tighter so that the center of his face is barely poking out.

He shifts what’s still showing of his eyes barely over to Yeonjun and grumbles “There’s a reason for that. You’re way too much to take in the mornings.”

Yeonjun gasps rather offendedly, hand placed on his chest as if to show that he is shocked, but then he comes out of it and fixes Soobin with a critical stare.

“So you’re telling me the reason isn’t that you have in fact never been up this early in your life.”

Soobin sighs, turning and staring forward as the line moves up slightly, taking a single step to catch up with it.

“Well… that too.”

“Yea. That’s what I thought. But dude, why haven’t you been online any this week? I’ve had no one to play with, and your ranking’s gonna be weak as hell, since I know you probably care about that more.”

He groans and shoves his hands into his front hoodie pocket, trying to keep them warm.

“I’m trying not to think about that… I’ve been busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“...This…” he says slowly, momentarily pulling his hand back out to wave it around.

Yeonjun looks all around as he does so, then looks back at him with a slightly astounded look on his face.

“Charity..?”

“Well. You know, stuff for the club…”

“I… see… Wow, I was right, you really are an angel.” Yeonjun sighs. “What’s happened, I used to think I was the good one.”

Soobin looks over at his friend as if he’s crazy and grumbles, “When did you think that?” 

“Always, I’m an angel. Weren’t you just saying, mere weeks ago, that you dreamt about that time you had a concussion in high school? Have you forgotten who took care of you then?”

Soobin groans and rolls his eyes, wishing he hadn’t told him about that. It wasn’t anything he necessarily wanted to talk in any detail about or even necessarily think any longer on that day, but somehow, some way, whether they ever actually mean to or not, he and Yeonjun always end up telling the other everything anyway. The reason that he often ends up hearing more about Yeonjun’s love life than he’d ever want to, he assumes.

Soobin shifts back and forth uncomfortably, converse scraping slightly against the gritty old sidewalk beneath them.

“So, is he here?”

“Huh? Yeonjun turns to him, hands now shoved into his jacket pockets too, shoulders hunched up as his teeth jitter slightly. “Is who here?”

Soobin doesn’t answer right away, til eventually it dawns on Yeonjun who he could be talking about when he thinks back on the story.

“Wait, do you mean Kai?”

But before Soobin has a chance to answer, they hear someone shout, rather hurriedly, “Name?” and they realize there is no longer anyone in front of them in line, just a big space in front of the table where they should be standing by now.

“Ah. Sorry.” Yeonjun points at himself, then over to his friend, as he says, “Choi Yeonjun, Choi Soobin.”

The man flips through his clipboard, eventually coming across their names and highlighting over them, then asking, “Did you guys have any preference for what you wanted to do today? We need help in the kitchen and serving when the food is finished, and we need help sorting through everything for the clothing drive.”

“Well, this guy can’t cook, and I don’t know how I feel about letting him interact with people either, so clothing drive might be best.”

Soobin glares over at Yeonjun while the guy answers, rather hesitantly, “Uhh? Ok, clothing drive it is,” then then asks a woman nearby to show them where to go.

“Asshole,” Soobin mumbles while they walk into the building and trail behind, people moving all around them, working on different things.

“Hey, am I wrong? Morning you is way too grouchy to let talk to already sad people.”

Soobin just grumbles, then comes to a stop beside Yeonjun in a back room, in front of a few large stacks of containers, where the woman turns to face them and explains what to do, taking the lid off and demonstrating with a few pieces quickly.

“Ok… I think that’s it then. Any questions?”

“Nope, sounds good,” Yeonjun says, giving a thumbs up while Soobin shakes his head, and she walks out, leaving them to begin unstacking the containers and deciding which they should start with.

“So, what was that about Kai?” Yeonjun asks as he takes the lid off of one.

“What? Nothing about him, I just asked if he was here.”

“Shouldn’t you know that, aren’t you guys the ones who set up for your club to come help with this? Don’t tell me you’re still refusing to talk to him,” Yeonjun pauses what he’s doing to glare at him.

“I’m not! God. We talked about it yesterday, I just didn’t know if he was here yet.”

“Hm…” Yeonjun’s eyes are still narrowed as if he doesn’t believe him, and Soobin is just about to make another attempt to defend himself when Kai quickly comes rushing through the door.

“Wow, you’re actually here!”

Soobin startles at his sudden entrance, jumping slightly as the door flies open and hoping that he didn’t hear what they were talking about. He’s not sure why he’s so concerned, it’s not exactly like Kai doesn’t know about the… tumultuous relationship they’ve had, yet, for whatever reason, it still worries him.

Soobin narrows his eyes.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be? We just talked about this yesterday.”

The brown haired boy looks off to the side and taps his mouth as if he’s thinking.

“Yea, but I wasn’t expecting you so early… Most the time if I text you, you don’t answer til at least noon… And you always pick the latest time possible whenever we need to meet. Like, remember when we were meeting with Ryujin, and she asked if we could-AH!”

“HEY!” Yeonjun whacks Soobin with one of the large container lids. “No throwing the clothes! You’re gonna get us fired, and do you know how embarrassing it’s gonna be to get fired from doing charity work?!” He goes back about his business, separating the bin he had been working on, all the while mumbling about how much trouble he’d be in with Beomgyu and Jimin, though Soobin isn’t sure what authority Beomgyu has to do that when he’s as new a member as Yeonjun is.

Kai silently walks over and hands him back the balled up pair of socks he’d flung at his arm in an attempt to shut him up. Soobin puts his hand out for them and waits for Kai to let go, but instead he stands there momentarily, both of them gripping onto this pair of used socks, and stares at Soobin’s face. Soobin gulps when it goes on a little longer than he’d like, but before he can ask him what he’s doing, or perhaps tell him to let go of the socks, Kai points up to his own face and asks “Are you cold?”

Soobin frowns, confused, and Kai just says, “Your hood,” then tugs gently on the hoodie string Soobin had pulled tightly earlier to leave only the very center of his face exposed while outside, and Soobin suddenly realizes, he looks… like an idiot.

“Do you wanna borrow my jacket?”

Soobin quickly pulls the face opening as wide as he can get it and yanks the hood off his head, shaking his hair out, then flattening his bangs as best he can.

“No! I’m… I’m not cold, I’m fine. Don’t you have a job to do? Leave me alone. Who- Who pulls another man’s hoodie string, anyway? Just… go do your job.”

Yeonjun snickers and hides his face, pretending he’s still busy doing his sorting when Soobin glares at him.

He looks back at Kai, expecting him to be frowning at him, but instead he just laughs and turns around, waving back at them and saying, “I’ll tell Jimin and Beomgyu you’re here!” as he walks out the door.

Soobin stands stiffly for a moment, fists clenched at his sides, before awkwardly sitting down to start going through a container, and Yeonjun stifles another laugh.

“You two seem like you’re getting along.”

“What?” Soobin looks up at him, completely lost. “How is that what you call that?”

“Well, I mean… he said you’d been texting.”

“Yea, about the club.”

“Yea, but you said you guys had been emailing before because you refused to give him your phone number.”

“Well… Namjoon has us in a group text anyway, plus then I remembered we weren’t fifty and I check my emails about once a week.”

“Fair…” Yeonjun says, still looking rather contemplative. “Still though.”

Soobin just rolls his eyes and continues rifling through the clothes in front of him, and for a very small moment, as they usually are with Yeonjun, it’s silent.

“Ok, well, how’d that meeting with the Women’s University go anyway? Isn’t that what he was talking about when you threw a sock at him?”

Soobin sighs, wondering where to start there.

“Well… I was shit. I had her meet us later than she wanted, then when we got there she was… pretty rude, and I didn’t contribute anything useful at all or know how to talk to her.”

“You? Not knowing how to talk to women? Wow, to think we’ve been together all these years and I’m still learning new things every day. See, that’s what keeps this relationship so fresh.”

“I know you said we can’t throw clothes, but can I just punch you?”

“Oh my god. I hope this isn’t how you talked to that poor woman.”

Soobin rubs his temples and grits out, “God, you’re so annoying.”

“Fine, fine, sorry, so what happened?”

“Well…” Soobin pauses in the middle of what he’s doing and places the shirt he’d just picked up in his lap, then lowers his voice, as if he’s telling some kind of secret, and Yeonjun leans in closer. 

“So, Kai had all this… stuff with him. Like, all these ideas he had, and art he had designed, and he showed her Taehyung’s Instagram and everything since he’d apparently said he’d help. Did you know at the party he was talking to him and Jimin and Beomgyu all about this stuff? Beomgyu said he’ll help with the art too, apparently.”

“Oh… that’s why he was talking to Beomgyu,” he mutters. “Drunk me thought he was just trying to steal my man.”

“What? Soobin frowns disgustedly. “No. Anyway, so he did all that and obviously, she kind of came around. Then, they just… talked for a long time and he, like… I don’t know,” he waves his hand around, then picks the shirt back up and gets back to work, “charmed her, or whatever. You know how he is, he’s… persuasive and all that.”

“Yea, no, I know. You wouldn’t shut up about it all throughout high school.”

Soobin rolls his eyes and Yeonjun just stares at him for a moment, then finally says, “Not so bad when it’s on your side, though, right?”

He absolutely hates that he can’t argue with him on this. After all, it really was the first time he’d thought of that particular aspect of Kai’s personality as maybe not such a bad thing. Was Soobin really so selfish that he can just that easily go from thinking of a person as evil to thinking of them as a valuable asset based solely on how helpful they are to him? He would like to think not, but then…

“...Fuck you.”

Yeonjun bursts out laughing.

“See, you guys are doing fine.”

Soobin just glares straight forward at the item of clothing in his hand as he folds it.

“Maybe Namjoon’s anti-bullying club won’t fall to ruin the moment he leaves, after all. Its co-presidents are getting along… They’re showing up to places on time. You haven’t _gamed_ in a week cause you’re busy with _club activities_? I mean, who are you?! Seriously, what’s happened?”

Soobin sighs and looks off to the side, dropping his shoulders slightly in preparation for what he’s about to say.

“I just… after that day, I saw all the stuff he did and whatnot, and I realized I’ve been… really useless so far. I mean, no matter who I’m running it with, I did say I wanted to join to help and stuff, then I saw him and forgot all that and just acted like an asshole… So. Yea. I wanna actually try to do a good job from now on and not just make him do everything.”

“And- You know, let him take all the credit,” he adds on quickly.

“Wow, that was almost really sweet.” Yeonjun sighs and reaches over to pat his friend on the shoulder. “No, but seriously, I’m proud of you, buddy. I knew you’d get there eventually… However many years later.” He glares back at him. “So, are you actually thinking about not dropping out of this the first chance you get next year then?”

Soobin shushes him rather angrily and loudly the second he hears the door start to open, and in runs Beomgyu, who bounds up to Yeonjun and throws his arms over his shoulders and kisses him quickly, causing Yeonjun to look at Soobin immediately after and point out, “Oh, right, we’re dating now.”

He huffs and rolls his eyes, thinking that of course he would not see Yeonjun for a week and his entire relationship status would change.

Yeonjun just puts his arm around Beomgyu’s waist, Beomgyu turning around to face Soobin while still clinging onto Yeonjun’s neck, and he tells him, “Listen. I tried to tell you, but I could hardly get in contact with you all week! Plus, I woulda preferred to tell you in person. And, I mean, it’s not like you didn’t see this coming anyway, you saw us making out.”

Beomgyu turns to him angrily, about an inch from his face, and says, “What do you mean he saw us making out?!”

“At the party! I’m pretty sure anyone could see us making out, Gyu, we were in a room with like twenty other people.”

“Oh,” he looks as if he completely forgot that happened til now, then looks off, pouting, and mumbles, “still.”

Yeonjun sighs, then Beomgyu abruptly ends his pouting and makes direct eye contact with Soobin.

“Anyway, switch with me, I wanna be with Yeonjun.”

“Huh?” Soobin frowns at him for a moment, then asks “What are you doing?”

“Kitchen.”

“...Wouldn’t it make more sense for Yeonjun to switch with your partner so that I don’t inadvertently poison someone?”

“Nah, I was mainly eating anyway, so you can just take over doing that. And Kai knows… vaguely what he’s doing.”

“Fine.” He puts the last item of clothing he has in its appropriate bin and tells him, “You’re lucky _I don’t_ wanna be with Yeonjun.”

“Rude,” Yeonjun says, and waves him out the door.

—

The first thing Soobin notices upon entering the kitchen is… yelling.

He scans around the scene, finding the main culprit to be a very red-faced man with black hair in an apron, who Soobin thinks he might find vaguely familiar if his face weren’t so red. His accomplice, however, seems to be Jimin, who is screaming back at the man, while Taehyung stands in the middle looking like he seriously may be on the verge of tears.

He stands in the doorway, afraid to walk any further into the room, then looks past them to see Kai sitting all the way in the back corner on the floor in front of the oven.

He quickly scales the walls to get back to him, trying his best to go unnoticed by the older men screaming back and forth in the center, and sits down against the wall a few feet away from him.

Kai turns from where he was staring into the oven and blinks at him.

“What’s happening?” Soobin winces.

“Ah. That.” Yes, that. Had he not been noticing any of this going on before Soobin showed up?

He sighs and continues, “Well, Namjoon’s roommate, Jin, is like… some sort of professional chef or something, and he didn’t think Jimin and Taehyung were listening to him or taking this seriously enough. Jimin said they were trying their best, and, you know, it went from there.”

“I see…” Soobin stares at them, rather concerned. 

“Anyway.” He sighs. “I guess I’m your partner now, Beomgyu wanted to be with Yeonjun. They’re dating now or whatever, apparently.”

“Yea, I figured he would when I told him he was here.” Kai laughs and asks him, “But weren’t they already dating from what you said they were doing at the party?”

This guy really won’t even say the words “making out,” Soobin notes. He has to stop his mouth from twitching because he’s not about to explain he’s trying not to laugh at him for refusing to say the words “make out,” because, after all, then he’d have to say them too. Which, he can. He’d just… rather not right now.

Instead, he rolls his eyes and waves his hand dismissively, telling him “You would think, but… I don’t try to keep up with how that works.”

Kai laughs again and tells him, “Me neither, I guess. Well, you chose a pretty good time to switch, we don’t really have much else to do right now. That cake’s in the oven and I’m just waiting to take it out and put the other in, then we can decorate it. Well, with what’s left of the icing. Beomgyu ate lots.”

Soobin’s eye twitches slightly and he can’t help but think that that guy and Yeonjun are truly going to make the perfect annoying couple.

“Yea… a great time. Now I get to see all this,” he gestures, with all the sarcasm he can manage, toward the front of the room.

Just as he does that, he sees Taehyung fling some flour at their angry chef roommate, making him freeze and Jimin burst out into laughter. Taehyung has his hand covering his mouth now, trying not to laugh, until Jimin throws some at the guy too and from there it breaks out into absolute chaos.

Kai expels air out his mouth in panic and moves to open the cabinet door in front of him to keep himself safe, meanwhile Soobin ducks as clouds of flour start making their way in his direction. Kai quickly opens the cabinet door on the other side and ushers him over, Soobin scooting up to his side for safety too.

Kai laughs as Soobin pulls his legs up, burying his head into his knees with a look of agony on his face.

He turns enough to peek one eye out and says, “We’re not being allowed back here, are we?”

“Hey, this isn’t our club. We’re baking a cake, we’re doing fine.”

Soobin huffs out a slight laugh, burying his face again and saying, “True.”

The longer this goes on with his face buried in the darkened safety of his knees, arms creating a barrier over his head, he starts to become aware of just how warm his right side is. The side he’d slid closer to Kai, he notes, after a moment. 

Had he moved that close? The slight pressure against his leg tells him he did, and before he knows it his left side is equally warm. Along with his face, and well, maybe his entire person, he thinks, bringing his hand up to cover the back of his neck in case it’s red.

He doesn’t… typically get this close to people. Yeonjun was different, Yeonjun just kind of comes at everyone with equal amounts of warmth and (verging on overly) friendly physical affection and he was honestly, more or less, forced to get used to it, not that he can say he minds now, it got him a best friend, after all. 

But, if left up to Soobin completely on his own, he would probably never choose to get this physically close to a person at all. The fact that he did it, without thinking, and to a guy he wouldn’t even speak to until about a week ago, is… embarrassing, to say the least.

Confusing, to say the most.

He guesses he must’ve really not wanted to get flour on him and thinks he needs to sort through his fucking priorities the first chance he gets.

Kai doesn’t seem to be sharing in his mortification, however, as when Namjoon comes in and starts whisper-yelling at them to clean everything up and that people are starting to arrive, he can clearly hear (and feel) him beside him, trying to stifle a laugh.

As soon as they run out to find cleaning supplies and collect others to help them clean up, Soobin shoots up and walks over to the other side of the room. He pushes the door to the serving hatch in the wall open just enough to look out at the dining area, where he sees a few teenagers, some who look to be younger than him, sitting around at the tables talking. He watches until the timer on the oven goes off, then walks over and stands at the island in the middle of the kitchen, tapping the edge as Kai pulls the large cake out and struggles to sit it down in front of them.

He wipes his face with his forearm, then looks at Soobin, who still hasn’t spoken, noticing the serious look on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Are those kids out there really homeless? They look… really young.”

“Oh.” Kai’s face falls, and Soobin feels almost bad for bringing his mood down so drastically from how he’d been a minute ago.

“Yea… Their parents kick them out because they don’t approve of their sexuality and whatnot… That’s specifically what this organization helps with, that’s why the GSA chose it.”

“I know… Soobin sighs and pushes his still messed up hair back. “I looked it up when you told me what it was called yesterday… I guess I didn’t expect them to look so young though. That’s… so sad.”

“Mhm.” Kai nods solemnly, then asks him, “Wait, you looked it up?”

Soobin nods.

“And actually read about it?”

Soobin looks at him disgustedly, sensing the offense in this line of questioning, and says, “ _Yes_ , I look things up, I read things, I’m half-president of this club too, you know. Geez.” He rolls his eyes, then grabs the second cake pan.

“Speaking of which, I’m doing this one.” He tries to lift it, then realizes it’s heavier than it looks, goes over to open the oven first, and comes back and picks it up with both hands, struggling to get out, “Because… as half president… I do-” he pauses to drop it rather unceremoniously onto the oven rack, then pants a little.

“...Half the work.”

“...Right.”

He glares at Kai, who is staring at him, looking annoyingly amused, then walks back over and stands beside him in front of the cake and what’s left of the icing Beomgyu didn’t eat, just as Jimin, Taehyung, Jin he thinks it was, and now Jungkook walk back in with cleaning supplies.

He can see more people gathered outside than before when the doors swing open, and he stares briefly out there again, before turning back and grabbing the icing spatula Kai is holding out for him, scratching his forehead embarrassedly at being caught looking again.

Kai starts putting the icing in a piping bag and Soobin thinks for a moment, before speaking back up, Kai hearing him just barely over the others arguing amongst themselves as they start to clean.

“I guess… I’m kind of glad I joined this club, though.”

Kai grins at him, looking a little too smug for Soobin’s liking, then simply says, “Yea.”

“Ok, calm down.” 

Kai laughs and Soobin looks away and mumbles, “Ice the cake.”

—

They’re standing at the subway platform as the train pulls in, blowing an extra gust of cold air by, making them both bury their faces further into their scarves and rub their hands together and shove them in their pockets, respectively.

Soobin can’t wait for these meetings to be over, if he’s honest. The ones with Kai, Namjoon, and their own club members, on their own campus, he doesn’t mind so much. In fact, he feels like he’s finally become… almost good at those. 

But, as the months passed by and their meetings with the other groups participating in the benefit became more and more frequent, he grew extremely tired of having to travel to wherever their designated meeting spot of the day was in, what was now, the freezing cold weather. Or at least more cold than someone who didn’t wanna leave his house in the first place preferred.

The only upside was that this was finally the last one before the benefit. Well, no, he was lying. The only upside was that this was at Ryujin’s campus and he was finally, unlike the first time they’d met here (very unlike the first time they’d met here) showing up prepared.

He’d been trying his best to take his own notes since that day, had finished in great detail the project Namjoon had them working on about a time bullying affected him (about his brother), had collected everyone else’s who wasn’t coming, and had gotten the finished artwork, typed up and printed off all the flyers. 

So, as cold as he was, his heart, at the very least, was warmed at the thought of seeing the smug look wiped from her face, as he presented her with all this.

He’s snapped out of his thoughts as he hears Kai’s phone go off, the subway starting to slow in front of them.

He answers and Soobin immediately sees his face drop, looking at him confused and waiting to hear what’s going on, hoping it’s nothing about the meeting.

“Oh my god. I know, Mom, I’m so sorry! Ugh… No, I know. I promised. It’s just…” he looks over at Soobin and sighs, then puts his head down, hair that’s gotten a little longer over the months falling into his face and rubbing it out of the way with his hands. 

He stands back up straight and says, “No, it’s... nothing. I’m sorry. I’ll be there. Love you.”

Soobin frowns at that, really wondering just what the hell is going on now. He’ll be there? He’ll be where? He hopes to god Kai’s mom is a student at the Ewha Womans University.

Kai hangs up and turns to him with a distraught look on his face.

“Soobin… I’m so sorry. I forgot I told my mom I’d babysit my little sister for her and my step dad's anniversary.”

“Oh,” Soobin says, looking disappointed.

“I… think I have to, they haven’t done anything for it in years and planned something big and they’re not comfortable with leaving her home by herself yet. But… Do you think you’ll be ok alone? And… with Ryujin?”

Soobin has a brief vision of himself slapping the folder in front of her and laughing in her face, then thinks, ok, maybe this isn’t exactly what Kai had in mind by doing ok with her. Soobin had only managed with her this long, or probably in those meetings at all, because Kai was there. Kai needed to be there.

He sighs, then slowly starts, “What if… you went to the meeting… and I watched your sister. Would your parents allow that?”

“What?!”

As used to Kai as Soobin was by now, he doesn’t think he’ll ever quite be used to just how loud he can suddenly get at times.

He winces slightly and asks, “Would they not allow it?”

“Well… they might. They’ve had other babysitters before, but… do you really want to babysit?”

“Sure,” Soobin tells him. “I like kids.”

“You do?!”

“Why are you so yell-y all of a sudden today? Yes, I wouldn’t mind at all. You need to be at the meeting, you’re better at that stuff and with all them than me.” Soobin looks quickly at the subway as it pulls to a stop, then says “Ok, we need to hurry up and decide, are you ok with that?”

Kai just stares at him for a moment, then looks behind him at the doors as they open, and back at Soobin quickly.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, positive. Are you?”

“Um. Yes?”

He looks back into the subway car and back at Soobin in panic, as the black haired boy quickly unzips his backpack and pulls the large founder out with all its contents he’d collected over the months.

“Here.” He places it in his hands, Kai frowning down at it in confusion.

“It’s stuff I’ve been working on including the flyers and the projects from everyone in class except yours. Just- I know you’re probably not willing to slap it down directly in front of her, which is definitely why you should be going instead of me, but, you know, maybe slap it… just a little bit… near her.”

Kai stares at him and down at the folder, looking either impressed or concerned, Soobin isn’t too sure.

“Ok?”

“Ok. Yea, ok!” He snaps out of it and runs onto the subway, waving back at him and saying, “Thank you, thank you.”

“Stop. It’s fine, good luck.” Soobin waves back. “Don’t forget to tell your mom. And send me the address, or I’m not gonna know where to go!”

“Ah, yea ok, I will! Bye!”

—

Kai knocks on the door of his mom’s house many hours later, and is met with a Soobin who looks much more tired than he left him, and, more notably than that, who has his hair in two tiny ponytails on top of his head. He yawns and rubs his eye tiredly as he tells Kai to come in, pushing the door open with his other hand and drawing Kai’s attention to his fingernails that are painted a nice shade of sky blue.

He sits on the couch with a big huff and Kai shuts the door, then stands in front of it, staring at him in amusement.

“She’s only been asleep for like half an hour… To be fair, I started trying well over an hour ago, but I said I liked kids, I did not say they listened to me. What?”

“Nothing, I’m sure she liked you too.”

Soobin briefly looks distracted by the compliment, before he narrows his eyes and asks, “Wait, really? Why?”

Kai points up at his own head, making Soobin reach up and feel the tiny ponytail, then panic and quickly pull them both out, leaving the hair still sticking up slightly in both spots.

Kai throws his head back and laughs rather obnoxiously, making Soobin cross his arms and sit back roughly against the couch, pouting as he says, “You’re so loud today.”

“Sorry, sorry.” 

Kai walks up to him and stares thoughtfully down at the two pieces of hair sticking up, before patting them both down and side-stepping to sit next to him on the couch.

“Ah?!” Soobin grabs onto both sides of his head, jumping away from him. “What was that for?!”

Kai fixes him with an aloof stare and answers, “Your hair was still sticking up. So, the nails too?”

Soobin sighs and looks down at them, fanning his fingers out.

“...She at least let me pick the color.”

Kai nods with his lips pressed together, trying his best to hold his smile in.

“Yea, it’s nice.”

Soobin lets out an annoyed huff and lays his head back on the couch.

—

They’d put a movie on until Kai’s mom and stepdad had gotten home, but truly the time had mostly been spent talking about the meeting, Kai informing Soobin that he did indeed slap the folder down and Ryujin did in fact look astounded, and catching him up on anything else he’d missed.

They’re on the mostly empty subway now, both actually having a place to sit next to each other with how late it is, and still going over everything that happened, between Soobin with Kai’s sister and Kai with the meeting.

“I still can’t believe you let her give you a makeover.”

“Wow… You’re saying you didn’t think I needed one, that’s so sweet.”

“Ack, that’s not what I’m saying!” Kai shoves his shoulder, making Soobin lean over into the empty seat next to him.

“Oh… Well, then, rude.”

Kai stares unamused at him, mouth formed into a pout but twitching up slightly on the sides.

“I meant, I guess I’m still just so surprised you like kids.”

“What, why?”

“I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem like you would… You’re so surprising.”

Soobin looks away, unamused look on his face, and nods once.

“Yea, I’m a great person. Don’t listen to what Yeonjun says. Anyway, so show me the face she made when you smacked the folder down again.”

Kai bursts out laughing again, leaning forward and then leaning back into his seat and looking, just slightly disapprovingly at Soobin.

“You know, I don’t wanna ruin this rivalry you’ve created in your mind, but she’s actually really nice.”

Soobin rolls his eyes and waves his hand dismissively at him.

“Of course you think that. Everyone’s nice to you cause you’re more likable than me.”

Kai stares seriously at him, making Soobin realize his mistake. He hadn’t meant to, but he thinks he probably sounded like his old self again saying something like that.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean that- like- ...It’s a compliment, or whatever. She really is nicer to you, cause… you’re nicer to her, I guess. People just… don’t wanna be mean to you.”

Kai frowns at him now, looking thoughtful for a moment and making Soobin start to panic as the silence stretches on, but then he leans his head back against the window and smiles strangely at him.

“...It’s nice that you think that.”

Soobin studies his face seriously for a moment, before he sits back up straight with a bigger, less mysterious smile now.

“Anyway! I don’t have to show you her face again, you’ll get to see it for yourself soon anyway. We can take her around the benefit and show her everything you did.”

“Oh, I-” Soobin frowns, and finds himself swallowing dryly as he looks over at him. “I’m… not going, remember?”

Kai’s face falls completely and he looks over at him so disappointedly that Soobin is filled with an inexplicable sense of guilt he never in a million years, when he’d first made this decision, thought he’d feel over it.

“You’re… still not? I mean. Yea, I guess I remember. It had just been so long since… I guess I thought you’d- I don’t… know.” 

He’s no longer looking at Soobin, but down at his hands in his lap, and Soobin’s silent for a moment, not knowing what else to say but “...Sorry.”

“...It’s ok,” he tells him, looking very much like it’s not ok. “You told me all those months ago…”

“...Yea.”

After that, it’s silent for the rest of the ride home.

—

Soobin clicks onto the 4th Instagram of Namjoon’s he’s found and tried in the last half hour in search of his photography account that he knows for a fact technically exists, somewhere. He groans loudly and pushes his hair up in frustration when he sees it’s his poetry account instead. 

Just how many clubs was this man in again? And did he really need a separate account for all of them? So far, he’d already stumbled across his personal, his painting account, something called “namjooning” that he still didn’t fully understand how it was different from a photography account but didn’t have the pictures from the benefit, and now a poetry account.

He’d been searching frantically in an attempt to keep up with what was going on with the benefit after he quickly realized Kai seemed to have no plans to post more than a picture of the poster and of the flyers, tagging both he and Taehyung in it.

If they were going to continue this club after Namjoon left, they’d really need to up their social media game… But then, he thinks between the two of them, they’ve got about a hundred followers at the moment… So is there really any social media game to be upped in the first place?

He stumbles across another account of Namjoon’s and gets briefly hopeful, only to see that it’s his dog’s and throw his phone across the bed with a loud groan. This man had a poem on his last account called “Can You Turn Off Your Phone.” Did he see the irony here?

Soobin flips over and buries his face in his pillow, letting out yet another long groan. 

He’d been feeling… a little guilty about missing the benefit, to say the least. Kai had claimed he wasn’t upset, but ever since that time on the subway a week ago, things had been… different, or something. Working on what little planning that was left for it didn’t feel the same as before, and Kai may not have necessarily been angry, but he was definitely acting… distant.

Soobin wanted to at least keep up with it now so he could talk to him about it later, if nothing else. Not to mention, he’d put a lot of work into this thing and wanted to see how it came out.

He hears his phone ding and picks it up quickly, seeing it’s from Namjoon’s personal account. He may or may not have turned notifications on for every account he came across, just in case. Well, except the dog. Soobin loved dogs, but it didn’t seem particularly helpful in this situation.

He looks at his story to see that he’s sharing photos from another account, and when he clicks on it, _bingo_ , it’s most definitely a photography account. 

He looks at all the photos he’s posted and is really still amazed, despite helping set it up the day before, at how fancy this whole thing ended up turning out. He really can’t believe he had any part in it.

That being said, he knows for a fact he would fit in even less at something this fancy than he would at your average party, and he thinks he probably made the right decision to stay home. He’s sure he would’ve just made everything more difficult for Kai and Namjoon if he had ended up going anyway.

After finishing going through all the photos he’d posted so far, Soobin moves on to looking through his story. Eventually, he comes across the project their club had worked on, seeing each individual paper they’d been written on had now been typed up (he’s guessing to help aid in the anonymity) and framed.

He finds his own and briefly feels ashamed at how short it is compared to the others, but he guesses he didn’t have as much to talk about as some of them as his wasn’t a first-hand experience, only something he experienced through his brother. Soobin had never been very popular or well-liked, but even still, he’d never actually experienced being bullied. Maybe he was never necessarily paid enough attention to to be bullied.

He moves on to some of the longer ones, zooming in and skimming over them, but when he gets to the longest there’s something about it that catches his attention. He screenshots, then exits the app and goes to his photos to zoom into it and read the entire thing, and when he does, it’s-

His eyes glaze over as they scan quickly through the words, almost refusing to believe what they see, but upon finishing, there’s no denying that this story is…

too familiar.

His phone slips out of his hand as he stares straight ahead, thoughts running through his head a million miles per minute.

This paper is definitely Kai’s.

And Soobin knows that because he definitely made some appearances.

He feels sick.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Ultimately, he picks his phone back up and texts Yeonjun.

_“Come over quick and bring one of your suits that’ll fit me.”_

_“oooboy, here we go!! I knew you’d come to your senses I’m omw”_

_“wait, black or blue??? or white”_

_“It doesn’t matter.”_

_“ok trusting the stylist nice I like it, I’ll be right over”_

_“Hurry.”_

—

“Shit, dude,” Yeonjun’s voice carries through the crack in his bathroom door as Soobin gets changed and his friend sits on his bed, reading through the screenshot on his phone. 

“Shit.”

“Yea,” Soobin grits out, struggling not to roll his eyes as he attempts to button his shirt, then realizes he’d matched them up wrong, and has to start all over.

Yeonjun sighs.

“Yea, I see the urgency… What are you gonna do?”

“I… don’t know. Apologize. I guess.”

“Yea, but what’s your explanation gonna be?”

“I don’t think I need to be making any excuses at this point, honestly. Just… fuck, I don’t know.” He pushes his bangs up off his forehead, which is starting to feel a little damp as he panics more and more. “Tell him I’m an asshole.”

“Man, I didn’t say excuses, I said explanation. There’s a distinct difference.”

“Which is what? I don’t think anything I have to say for why I acted the way I did is going to matter at this point. I mean, haven’t I said enough? He’s the one who had… all this to say, and never got to. And I just…”

He cuts himself off, sniffling quickly and rubbing his eye, then swinging the door open and walking out to his bedroom, where Yeonjun appraises him and says, “nice.”

Then, “You’re lucky my legs are so long, otherwise this would never fit you.”

“Ugh.”

Soobin rubs his eye again and crawls into his closet to find some shoes, Yeonjun studying him for a moment, then hesitantly asking, “Are you crying?”

“ **No**.”

“Ok, ok.”

Soobin finally finds the match to the only pair of dress shoes he owns and exits his closet, sitting on the floor and bending his leg up to put them on.

“Don’t you think he deserves to hear the truth though? Nothing to do with excuses, like… isn’t it just time you were finally honest?”

Soobin looks up at him, mid-tie, with a confused look on his face, then looks back down and finishes, starting on his other foot.

“Honest about what?”

“About… Ugh,” Yeonjun sighs and mumbles something under his breath about really having to spell it out for him. “You really still, even after all these months of getting along with him, don’t think there might’ve been any reason you always acted that way with him before. Think carefully.”

“...Because I thought he was manipulative and always got whatever he wanted. Because I’m an asshole.”

“No, god, Soobin. Ok, listen, if I’m way off here then just disregard all of this, but I don’t think I am. You didn’t like anybody in high school. But you weren’t obsessed with them the way you were him. I thought it was weird since day 1, but I was never sure what you were into, anyway, and I’d always just kind of been waiting around to find out… Honestly, I was never sure if you’d ever have a lack of disdain enough for anyone to be into them, so I wasn’t sure. But these past few months, man, I’ve been pretty sure.”

Soobin stands up and scrunches his face as if Yeonjun is speaking in some language he’s completely incapable of understanding.

“Sure of what? What are you talking about?”

Yeonjun stares at him, looking rather done, then says plainly, “You like him. Just admit it. I don’t know if that was the only way your simple mind could think to cope with it or what, but, whatever happened, it’s clear now that you do.”

Soobin’s face turns bright red and he stutters while looking for an answer, before landing on, “What the hell are you talking about?! You’re saying I was mean to him because I liked him? Do you actually think I’m that terrible of a person? God. Give… give this a rest, I need to go.”

“Well, you sure as hell can’t go with your hair like that.”

Soobin looks over into the mirror and damn, does he look like a mess. His face is still bright red, forehead shiny and hair sticking up from it in all directions.

“Don’t worry, I brought styling products. I’ll style it and you take my phone and call an uber, it’ll be faster.”

They move into the bathroom and Yeonjun gets started, while Soobin stares off into space silently, chewing on his thumb nail.

“You know, I’m not saying you’re a terrible person. You were a brat in high school, yea, you thought the whole world was against you, but so do… most kids in high school. You’re not like that anymore.”

Soobin scoffs.

“Seriously. I haven’t seen you be rude to him or any other undeserving person, other than myself, in months. You’ve done all this charity work, and I never would’ve thought I’d see high school Soobin doing any work in general in my whole life. And you’ve stepped up and helped him a ton with this club and this benefit. You’re a good person, he’ll forgive you. I mean, I always knew you were, otherwise we wouldn’t be friends, it was just… you know, very deep down before.”

Soobin is silent for a moment, before finally asking him, voice quiet, “How can I be a good person if I treated him like I hated him all those years, and… If you’re right. If it were really because I- liked… him. How could a good person mix those up?”

“Well… sometimes people get confused. Sometimes people are dumb.”

Soobin narrows his eyes and stares at the wall, still feeling more sick to his stomach than ever.

“And anyway, people don’t say that about love and hate for no reason.”

Soobin meets Yeonjun’s eyes in his bathroom mirror, arching his eyebrow up in question.

“Say... what.”

“That, you know… it’s a fine line.”

—

Soobin arrives at the benefit hall after a long, taxing uber ride, full of contemplation and more unpleasant revisits to high school memories, and he feels… honestly, more confused than ever.

At the least, he’s come to realize that he always has been, but he’s not sure if that helps him any.

He was wrong about Kai… in every way possible.

But just how the hell could he manage to be so wrong about himself? Could he really possibly be this unaware of even his own feelings?

It’s true he’d never liked a person before, so he can’t say for sure what it would feel like. Never even much had to wonder before now. But he’d seen Yeonjun like people, so he had… that to go off of.

His mind flashes back to Yeonjun at that party all those months ago, making out with his boyfriend (then not-boyfriend) in the game room of a busy party, and he shakes his head, deciding there’s absolutely no way that’s what it would look like if he liked a person, so he really has nothing to go off of at all.

Suddenly, though, his mind flashes to what Yeonjun had said the day after about Beomgyu, when he was trying to explain their… complicated relationship dynamic to Soobin.

_“He’s so stubborn. He likes me so much and just refuses to admit it.”_

Could... that be closer to how Soobin would be if he liked a person?

He isn’t sure, but he decides it’s not important now anyway. Apologizing is what’s important, and Yeonjun distracted him so much bringing up this other stuff that Soobin hadn’t even gotten a single chance so far to think about what he was going to say for that.

He walks into the benefit and gulps at just how different it looks now that there are so many people there. So many fancy looking, well dressed, probably rich people. He shakes his head and reminds himself it doesn’t matter, he’s not here for any of them anyway.

He scans the crowd, looking for the familiar wavy brown hair that tends to tower, almost as much as Soobin’s own head, over everyone else’s in any room he enters. Yet, he somehow doesn’t manage to spot anything. What he does spot, however, the opposite in every way, is the short blonde hair of the person he wants to see basically the least in any given moment, Shin Ryujin.

He sighs and makes his way over to her, hoping that by some chance she’ll at least know where Kai might be.

He goes to tap her shoulder, then noticing she’s wearing a sleeveless dress and deciding better of it, pokes her directly in the back of the head.

She grabs the back of her head and flips around, seeming rather affronted and staring Soobin up and down looking as if she’s about to fight him.

Slowly, though, her face turns to one of tacit approval and she purses her hips slightly, nodding her head. She gestures toward his suit, then crosses her arms.

“Not bad. What are you doing here though, poking me on the back of my head?” She’s already back to looking exhausted and annoyed by him. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I wasn’t. Where’s Kai?”

She sighs, then points in the direction of the stage.

“Backstage. You probably shouldn’t bother him right now though, he has to make his speech in-” He walks away, leaving her rolling her eyes.

—

Backstage, he finds Kai pacing back and forth, muttering to himself under his breath, and pauses briefly, realizing that he still has absolutely no idea what he’s going to say.

Without thinking too much more on the matter, he makes his way quickly up to him, causing him to yell out when he suddenly notices Soobin standing only a few feet away.

“Soobin?! What… are you doing here?”

He takes in his appearance in much the same way Ryujin and Yeonjun had before he left, but before he can get a chance to comment anything on it, Soobin pulls out his phone and asks, “Did you write this?”

Kai’s face drops, and he’s silent for so long Soobin starts to think maybe he’s electing not to answer, but finally he looks away and nods his head very weakly.

Soobin’s arm drops, phone in hand. He doesn’t know why he should be disappointed at that, did he really still think there was some possibility he hadn’t?

“But… Soobin, I’m- I’m sorry, I started that paper a long time ago. And… it’s not just about you, anyway, it was about high school in general.”

“Sorry?!” He whisper-shouts a little more loudly than intended, causing the other boy’s eyes to widen as he flinches back slightly. 

Soobin lowers his voice and continues on, “Kai, what the hell are you sorry for? I…” he clenches his hand around his phone and looks down at the floor. “I treated you like shit. All because I had some stupid, preconceived opinion of you that was… all wrong anyway. And all while you were going through…” his voice gets choked off and he decides to end with, “Why didn’t you ever tell me all this?”

“Well... how was I supposed to know what you thought? I mean, I wasn’t going to beg you to like me.”

Soobin recalls what Yeonjun told him and decides that he’s right, Kai does deserve to know the truth, even if they are both figuring it out at relatively the same time.

“I… _did_ like you. From the first day we met. But I was stupid and fucked it up, then I didn’t know what else to do but _keep_ fucking it up, because… I’m an idiot.”

Kai just stares at him, eyes wide, with his mouth in a perfectly straight line, and says nothing.

“I thought…” Soobin sighs and rubs his forehead, being surprised for a moment when his bangs aren’t there to mess up, something that he’s just now realizing may be a nervous habit, and boy if ever was he fucking nervous. 

“I thought you were too good for me… I think. And I… guess I convinced myself that it was actually because I was jealous how much easier you had it, and… and god, that wasn’t... even true.”

Soobin buries his face in his hands, rubbing them back and forth and not daring to look up as the silence stretches on.

Eventually, Kai sighs and tells him, “There’s no way you could’ve known, anyway. I guess I could’ve technically told you, I was just… scared it wouldn’t matter. And I could’ve told you now but we’d been getting along so well I think I was afraid to remind you again that we hadn’t before.” He chuckles dryly, adding on, “Not that… that’s something either of us would really forget. I don’t know.”

Soobin, who’d peeked up from his hands to look at him while he talks, stares back down at the floor at that. He feels stupid, because he almost thinks… he did forget. He has to wonder if Kai ever will.

“Alright, well… since we’re talking about it now. I… wasn’t ever very well-liked in school. I never really knew what you were talking about when you said stuff like that. People either thought I was weird or didn’t try to talk to me since I was a foreigner. The only person I ever talked to much was Taehyun after he started tutoring me, and that was only because I apologized to him after we got caught cheating and I explained I was still having trouble with Korean. I’d only ever spoken it with my mom, so yea, in class I still had… no idea what I was doing.”

He pauses, seeming unsure of whether or not he wants to continue, but then goes on anyway.

“You were… the first person I’d ever really talked to when we talked for the entire detention period that day.” Soobin isn’t looking, but he can hear from his voice that he’s smiling in a way that, if he did look, he’d see wasn’t altogether happy.

“I guess I liked you that day too. But then you seemed to really hate me after we argued, so… I never really knew what else to say after that. And I guess I never did, even when we met again here,” he laughs, rubbing the back of his head and looking to the side, then quickly looking back, eyes wide, when he hears a choking sound coming from Soobin’s direction, head still buried in his hands and back shaking a bit each time he breathes.

“Are you… crying?” Kai asks him, clearly concerned.

“ **No** ,” he answers, clearly crying.

He sniffles through a couple shaky breaths, trying to calm himself down, and Kai stares at the top of his head not knowing what to do.

Soobin had sworn he wouldn’t cry, not only for his dignity’s sake, but because he didn’t want it to end up seeming like he showed up here for Kai to comfort him about what an asshole _he_ was. He’d come here to apologize and try to make amends. 

Still, actually hearing about just how much he’d fucked everything up. About how miserable Kai had been in high school, and how Soobin only ever did anything to make it worse. It made him feel so awful he found that he couldn’t keep his promise to himself. Not only that, but it made him wonder, would Kai ever really be able to forgive him for this? How even could he?

Before he knows it, he’s sobbing out some practically unintelligible mantra of “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”s and he barely even has the sense to realize just how far off this is going from whatever way he’d intended, but he knows it’s a mess.

Suddenly, though, his hands are being pulled away from his tear-streaked face, and he feels himself being pulled into a hug before he even has the chance to refuse it out of principle. Kai hooks his hands behind the other boy’s back and rests his forehead on his shoulder as Soobin stares forward, sniffling pitifully a few times, unable to believe that he is here making Kai comfort him while he apologizes.

“Stop…” he mumbles but makes no move to push him off, sniffling again. “You’re not supposed to have to be comforting me. I’m… supposed to be begging you for forgiveness.”

Kai laughs then, hugging him tighter, before holding him out at arm’s length and looking at him as if he’s stupid.

“You were most definitely right about being an idiot.”

Soobin’s face falls, and his eyes look like they’re about to fill up again, before Kai tells him, “Stop it, I’m joking!”

He sighs.

“Soobin, do you really think I would’ve been friends with you all these months if I didn’t already forgive you?”

Soobin blinks and looks off to the side, contemplating what he’d said.

“But…” he looks back and meets eyes with the other boy again, looking rather drained. “I never even apologized to you.”

“Well yea, but… you acted so different. You were nice, and I liked spending time with you, so I forgave you.”

Soobin’s mouth twitches as he looks off again, trying not to let himself cry anymore.

He sniffs, then mumbles, “There’s really no reason anybody shouldn’t like you. And… there’s really no reason at all you should like me.”

Kai sighs, then grabs his hand and looks him in the eye disapprovingly.

“You know, we probably wouldn’t have had so many problems if you didn’t have such a low opinion of yourself, so stop. And don’t do things like babysit my little sister and dramatically show up to confess to me while wearing a suit then tell me not to like you, it’s too confusing.”

Soobin glances at him, then looks off, pouting, and sniffles one last time before weakly retorting, “You’re confusing.”

Kai just rolls his eyes and laughs, then looks back and locks eyes with him until his name is suddenly called through the speaker system by the presenter on stage.

Kai just squeezes his hand and asks if he wants to come out with him, and Soobin has nothing to say and is well aware he looks like a mess, but he doesn’t ever wanna abandon him again so he nods his head like he’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

—

_“lmao how’d it go??? beomgyu and I had a watch party of namjoon’s livestream and we saw you guys holding hands on stage but you also kinda looked like you’d been bawling your eyes out so uh”_

_“This is Kai, he’s actually still crying lol… but I think he’s ok.”_

_“omg. welp, good luck to you both. ofc when I say that I mostly mean good luck to you”_

Kai laughs and turns to Soobin, who’s sitting beside him on the subway car, head leaned, face-first, onto his shoulder, where it’s been for the past ten minutes.

“It’s Yeonjun, he asked if you cried and told me good luck.”

He detaches his arms from where they’d been clinging onto Kai’s since the moment they left and hits him on the shoulder, tear-soaked face scrunched up in offense, but then almost immediately returns to his position buried into the wet shoulder.

Kai bursts out laughing, making Soobin groan and turn further into the crook of his neck.

He’s decided to be honest from now on, yes. But letting Kai see how he makes him smile even when laughing, loudly and obnoxiously at Soobin, in an only half-empty subway car, as he literally cannot make himself stop crying, that might still be too much.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> So this turned out... A LOT longer than intended lmao. I hope my Secret Santa recipient who gave me the prompt still likes it. I started to worry about it being too long halfway through and COULD NOT STOP, but I’m still kind of proud I wrote something longer for once.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_beomjunbaby?s=21)
> 
> (Oh, and just so everyone knows, I’m in love with both Ryujin and Taehyun. They just had to be mean to Soobin cause it’s what he deserved.)


End file.
